I was not trying to muddy the waters.
Sometimes a simple install just "goes wrong"...
Funny stuff happens on the way to the HD, etc...
I it happens a lot, I worry about the hardware.

"Windows Media Center Edition 2005 Update Rollup 2"
is the current latest "patch??" of Media Center.
It would seem to me that it is also XP-Service Pack 2 at the same time.
But that is just a guess. MS never made this easy.
As a matter of fact, I've seen some sort of stuff that was not supported
in Media Center when part of XP. (I never had it then so did not pay attention.)

I would look in Control Panel/System and see if it mentions the SP there.
I'm only concerned with the "as installed" OS-SP.
I warned my neighbor about this very thing with a Dell and an old install disk,
and after his third try he bought into what the problems was. (No firewall
RUNNING on the old ones.)

You can always pick and choose your updates one by one or in certain
"allowed combinations" by doing a custom install at the Windows Update site.
Vista is about the same.

Good luck,  Rick Glazier

From: "Donald DeWitt"
>First thing, the computer never did completely boot-up, only in safe mode.
clipped
>Also, Rick had concerns about the sp# of the reinstall; the exact wordings
>on the Dell/factory reinstall CD are “Windows Media Center Edition 2005 with
>Update Rollup 2.” 

                  Visit our website regularly for FAQs,
               articles, how-to's, tech tips and much more
                          http://freepctech.com