I'm wondering if there are any switches for the sp2 exe to change install options. Primarily I'm looking for an option to disable the backing up of data, it takes far too long and too much diskspace. If SP2 crashes out I'd rather just repair or clean install anyway.

You can do WindowsXP-KB835935-SP2-ENU.exe /? from either the Run box, or the Command Prompt for a list of switches.

Just do a /? on it and you will get a list of the switches. If you have it extracted do a /? on the update.exe

Tried that, for some reason /? just starts the xp2 install process. I suppose I'll have to extract update.exe and do it on that.

try a -x to extract and then update -s:[path to folder containing I386] to slipstream.

/n

Cheers