25.. Absolute panic

Service Pack 4 Setup Error

An error in updating your system has occurred.

Windows 2000 has been partially updated and may not work properly. It is recommended that you use your Emergency Repair disk to repair your system. To do this, insert the Windows 2000 Setup Boot Disk into the floppy drive, restart your computer, and then select the Emergency Repair option.

ok at this point you know it's going to be a long night. The mouth goes dry. The stomach feels queasy. All you can do is call James and beg for help. On ISP production servers downtime is not an option.

So I read out the error but there's really nothing out there about it. One post from someone who just tried reinstalling it and it worked. Another about some incompatibility with a piece of software we don't run.

So we tried just reinstalling the service pack. This time it decided it would install with no further errors. So we let it reboot. Two minutes later and it starts pinging again which is a good sign, however nothing is working. Web isn't responding, neither is anything else. This is where the real panic sets in. I was all set to go into the exchange to kick it, when suddenly it comes back (about 15 minutes later all up). According to the event log it had been running a consistency check on the web drive. Major sighs of relief are released. We rebooted it again to make sure it was all good, and it was.

Tempting fate, I then ran a quick backup of the system, then ran windows update to get the two post sp4 critical patches. Again it rebooted ok, and everything seems to be working. I think I can safely go to bed now.