XP won't boot after SP3?

[rehack]

Hi all. I updated an intel laptop from SP2 to SP3 via windows update, and after restart it fails to boot. It gets to the black loading screen with progress bar at the bottom, and that progress bar just keeps going and going (albeit 1 tick every second; slower than normal). I've left it for over an hour, still nothing.

Booting into safe mode gives a blue screen that only reads "+ _", no stop errors, nothing but those two symbols next to each other. Booting with last known good configuration leads to the never-ending progress bar again. Enabling boot logging fails to produce the ntbtlog.txt file. Nothing it written to the registry during bootup. Nothing is written to the event log either.

The drive itself is fine (according to chkdsk).

How can I diagnose this? I have no way of knowing which driver it is dying on, since boot logging won't save any output. Very infuriating.

I'm open to any suggestions whatsoever. I'd rather not have to reinstall XP, but it is of course an eventual option.

[bauxite]

strange, ive heard of this before.

searching google i get these links (try at your own risk)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950249 (try method 4, you need an XP cd)

http://www.techsupportforum.com/microsoft-...p3-install.html

what are you computer specs?