Windows XP SP3 Corrupting Registry Entries?

As if Microsoft needed to hear more Windows XP SP3 problems, right? You'd almost think they did this on purpose, as we know they'd rather all of us upgrade to Vista. Nah.

Only a day after reports that Windows XP SP3 was cutting off access for users of Microsoft's problematic Windows Home Server product, reports of SP3 corrupting the registry have surfaced.

The problem with Windows Home Server had a workaround as the problem is said to be that SP3 disables the Terminal Services ActiveX control. Instructions for enabling the control were posted to Microsoft's Windows Home Server forums by user ColinWH.

In the case of the registry corruption issues, a user named MRFREEZE61 reported that after installing SP3, he had issues with his Network Connections:

I was upgrading a well maintained XP PRO SP2 to SP3 on a Compaq Presario S5400NX. After the upgrade, while trying to open "My Computer" - it now takes much longer. But the real issue is that the Network Connections screen now does not show any of the NIC cards. I have three adapters that used to show up - the Onboard RealTek adapter was disabled prior to starting upgrade as was the Firewire Port. The working and enabled adpater was an INTEL MT1000/PCI. {Note however the network connection is working}. In an attempt to troubleshoot - I tried to bring up the Device Manager - and to my suprise - it is now empty.

Later, he posted that he had determined it to be invalid registry entries:

I'll be damned - it was indeed corruption introduced into the registry by the SP3 upgrade process itself. In my case it was located in:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Enum \ Root \ LEGACY_CCPROXY

All the invalid entries ( which for me all began with $%& ) had to be deleted.

Even more interesting was information in the post right after MRFREEZE61's "solution" post, a post by grfrost:

MRFREEZE61: I have found a similar corruption on my system.

I see parent keys that all seem to be Norton/Symantec product keys. These are throughout my registry and not limited to the location that you pointed out. These keys include:

LEGACY_LIVEUPDATE_NOTICE
Automatic LiveUpdate Scheduler
ccEvtMgr
ccSetMgr
CLTNetCnService
Instances
LiveUpdate
LiveUpdateNotice
NAVENG
NAVEX15
Symantec Core LC

Underneath EACH of these keys are over 180 corrupted keys FOR EACH ONE.

Aha, it makes me wonder if the SP3 install would have gone better if they had been running Windows Live OneCare rather than a Symantec security product.

As hard as the connection between Norton / Symantec and this problem may be to believe, a post by BandWidthJunlie who had a similar failure:

The only major differences between these machines were the following on the failed PC: -

Visual Studio 2003
Visual Studio 2005
SQL 2005
Norton 2008 (the other PC has Norton 2004)
Office 2008 (the other PC has Office 2003)

Then from jslynch78:

I too had this problem with NIS 2008. Looking at the forums, this problem has been showing up with all the SP3 RC's so it makes me wonder wy they released it instead of fixing it.

My answer to that would be that perhaps all those Microsoft computers in QA had OneCare installed. At any rate, Symantec denied any culpability in the issue (naturally), and some in the thread were asking for an automated registry cleaner.

I'm wondering if a tool like Registry Mechanic would correct the problem. There's probably a decent chance it would, but as I don't run Symantec products any longer, there's no way for me to confirm this.

Once again, as I've said before, if you're doing this major an upgrade, you should make an image of your hard drive (such as with Acronis True Image) before doing it. System Restore is just not that good. So, if something goes wrong, you have an image to go back to. You never know.