Windows XP Update BSOD Solution if you have no boot disc

One of our family laptops got the BSOD due to the recent XP Update (KB977165). None of our laptops were provided with XP disks - Dell's policy was to load XP in a partition on the hard drive and not give you a disc. All the published solutions refer to using the XP recovery utility - which is fine if you have an XP disc, but for those who don't, the advice is useless. I contacted DELL and Microsoft for help and they were also useless. Both wanted to charge me to fix a problem for which they are culpable (MS for the dodgy download, DELL for not providing XP boot discs). Anyway, after some searching I found a solution and the laptop now works. The solution lies in downloading the Recovery utility. This is how i did it:

1. You need another computer to access the internet.

2. The XP Recovery Console ISO file can be found in several places on the Internet.  The file we want is called xp_rec_con.iso.  This XP Recovery File ISO file can be downloaded from here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?ueyyzfymmig

Disclaimer: my AV didn't flag this as an infected file so i assume it is ok - if you decide to download it ,that's your risk,

3. After downloading burn the ISO file to CD. I used a (freeware) program I already had called IMGburn from http://www.imgburn.com/

4, Now place the CD in the broken laptop. when it starts up, press F12 and tell the computer to boot from CD not hard disk  (do this quickly or you will get to the screen that asks you to boot up in safe mode etc)..

5. The computer will now load the Windows set-up utility - follow the prompts and select "R" to enter the Recovery Console

6. From this point on, you can follow the published instructions to remove the dodgy MS patch.

7. Remember to exit the Recovery utility and remove the CD when you've finished. 

I hope this works for you as it did for me.

regards

nigelar