Service Pack update, now machine won't...

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croSSeduP

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My bro has a VERY old Dell Dimension 2400, P4, 256 mb RAM, 80GB hdd, and it HAD Windows XP Service Pack 2. I started to update it to Service Pack 3 and it was taking FOREVER, so I stopped install and rebooted, and Windows won't boot at all. I found out later that you aren't supposed to interrupt Windows update or things like this can happen. Ooops. So, here's what it is doing. Windows will start to boot and then this message comes up: autochk program not found - skipping AUTOCHECK. Then it will go into endless re-boot and do the same thing over and over. If I hit f8 while it is booting, and select "stop re-boot on system failure" the BSOD message that comes up reads:
STOP c000021a {Fatal System Error}
The Session Manager Initialization system process terminated unexpectedly with a
status of 0xc000003a (0x00000000 0x00000000).
The system has been shut down

It will not boot in Safe Mode either.
Now that I've "screwed the pooch", what is my next move to get this working? Thanks for any assistance.
 
Try booting to Last Known Good Configuration by hitting F8 during startup, it'll be one of the options listed. If that doesn't work, do you have the XP disk still? You can try doing a repair install if you do.

1. Insert the XP disk and boot off it
2. Press Enter to start installing XP, do NOT press R
3. Press F8 when prompted to agree to the EULA
4. Windows will then search for existing windows installations. It should find yours and ask you whether you want to repair or continue installation. Choose the repair option.
 
The repair install didn't work. I tried several times to apply the repair, but it always came back corrupted in some way. I ended up taking it to the computer shop that I trust and paying $110 to get it fixed. : (
 
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