I decided to finally install SP1 over the weekend. After I installed it, I lost my GeForce2 Ultra in the display adapters section!
Ok, no big deal, I figured I could just reinstall the nVidia drivers and all would be well. No luck. At first, the device showed up with a yellow exclamation icon declaring that we had a Code 10 (a generic "device failed to start" error). After some googling, I read that installing DirectX 9 might help for some reason. It didn't, of course. In fact, my device completely disappeared now. Reinstalling the drivers didn't do anything and searching for new hardware didn't help.
I hacked away at it over a day or two, with the little I had to spend on it, and it was really starting to get on my nerves.
It was probably a blessing in disguise - I was bound to be infinitely more productive since I couldn't be distracted by the likes of Madden 2003 and Command & Conquer: Generals.
But alas - I also was limited to a maximum 1024x768 resolution and 16 bit color with the generic VGA adapter it thought I was using. I'm very used to higher resolutions, and, especially with VS.NET, the lost real estate was driving me nuts.
I finally stumbled upon the problem. My Abit KT7-A RAID motherboad has a VIA chipset. Somewhere along the way, something related to the VIA 4-in-1 drivers went AWOL. The VIA CPU to AGP Bridge wasn't working. When I reinstalled those drivers, it found my video card and all was well.
StyleXP also stopped working (that build isn't supported it said), but I'm sure there's a patch somewhere I can download for it.
And, after all that, I just realized that Microsoft released a SP1a, with a few other changes. I'm very reluctant to install anything anymore.
Problems like this just contribute to the argument that automatic updates are not the answer. Imagine this scenario in the enterprise.