Windows won't load after installing .NET framework - wtf?

[PerchloricAcid]

In order to install Visual C# 2010 Express, I needed to install a bunch of stuff, among which is .NET framework 4.0. I'm using Windows XP, SP2 (now I'm posting from another computer).

The installation seemed to have went well, BUT...
It said that it needed to restart the computer. That's OK. But XP failed to load.
A screen letting me choose between Safe Mode, Last known configuration that worked, and Normal startup was shown. I tried all of those options, and none worked. Whenever I picked any, the XP loading screen was shown for a few seconds, then I kept getting the screen with the safe mode/last working conf/normal startup again.

Wtf is going on? I tried googling a bit, but I didn't come across anybody with the same problem.
I didn't use any custom settings or anything while installing.

Please help me if you know how. It's kinda urgent.
Thanks in advance.

[Jorpho]

Well, first question: why are you still running SP2 and not SP3? It wouldn't surprise me if Visual C# 2010 might require SP3.
http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/topic ... 0-express/

My other remark is that there's no way of telling for sure that .NET framework 4.0 is the problem and not the "bunch of other stuff".

If I had to take some completely wild guess, some kind of kernel update was necessary, such that you might be able to get back in if there's some way to edit your boot.ini and point it at the old kernel – but that's a completely wild guess and I have no idea if that would help at all. Your best bet is, of course, to reinstall Windows over itself (i.e. a "repair" install).

[PerchloricAcid]

I managed to access some files I needed by booting Ubuntu from a CD.
Perhaps I could edit the boot.ini thingy this way too? [Not that I'd know what exactly to do, though.]

Why am I still using SP2? Well, dunno, tbh. I actually use Ubuntu most of the time and enter XP seldom (once in a few months), so I didn't feel the need to change. Well, perhaps now I will, if I fix this issue (or reinstall Windows).

Regarding your other remark, true that.
I suspected it was up to the .NET framework because that's the last thing I installed before stuff went nuts. Before that, I installed Windows Installer 3.1, and one or two things more, and I can't really remember what were they.

And fuck, yes, you were completely right about it needing SP3. Darn, I thought I checked the requirements before installing every single thing - seems like I missed this one.

Thank you very, very much!
Soooo, what would you suggest?


P. S.
In the first post, I mentioned this was urgent. It's not so urgent any more, as I've taken all the files that I had urgently needed to take. However, I would still like to try to fix the issue without reinstalling, if somehow possible.

[Jorpho]

Maybe Google around and see if someone has encountered a similar problem after attempting to install on XP SP2? I would have hoped that the installer would have detected something like that if it was going to break something, but who knows?

[PerchloricAcid]

I tried to install .NET Framework 4.0 on a clean Windows XP SP2 machine. The installation failed. It's the normal behavior.
.NET Framework 4.0 installer checks the bottom line of the minimum requirement during the installation. If any minimum requirement is not met, the installation will fail.

Yes, we have installed the 4.0 .Net Framework, using an executable, on a several machines with windows xp SP2 without any issues. We also are running our application without experiencing any errors, but we still plan additional testing. We have not experienced any installation failures like you mentioned when installing the 4.0 framework on xp sp2.

I've successfully installed .net framework 4 on several XP (32bit) SP2 machines from network installationsetup file (exe) and it has worked fine with the app that requires it. Obviously an unsupported setup but not found any problems - yet! I wonder if the web installer has a block on SP2 but the exe allows it.

(source)

There's different stuff, but nothing like mine.