Dell factory installed Windows 2003 RTM and Service Pack 1 go boom!

Note to self: Run on any Dell 2003 box before we take them to SP1.

I found this problem by accident when we had to get a machine up to date with Security patches.

If you've installed Windows 2003 SP1 on a Dell PowerEdge server that came from the factory with Windows 2003 RTM on it, you've probably already downloaded this update. The dreaded blue screen on bootup of "Stop 0x00000051 (REGISTRY_ERROR)".

If not, you really need to take a look at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/898792 before upgrading.

Microsoft's fix:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B16BE1A3-A567-40EE-9012-EEC238C000AE&displaylang=en