Cant connect to Internet after SP2 upgrade

I got a windows update bubble to upgrade to SP2 last night, I downloaded and installed the update. Upon restart I received a Black screen. I could only interface with the machine at this point by toggling 120v power interface. AFter waiting a few minutes, i turned the machine back on. Restart then "completing sp2 ugrade", then an automatic restart that did not result in a blackscreen. At this point, watching the performance monitor on my sidebar, my processor was doing its impersonation of a pacific rim seismograph and I could not longer connect to the internet. The services apparently were not running. Trying to repair, reconfigure, etc resulted in a pop up saying either, "Service is not running" or when trying to get a service running, "error 5/ not authorized" to start services.

Currently I have backed up my pictures and music and am reiinstalling vista from my oem disk.

now if the problem persists, does someone have a fix? or am I doomed to pay dell for them to tell me what I have to buy from them?

Please help,

Ed

Ps. I only know enough about computers to be dangerous. It may be funny to some of you IT guys, but I could really use some help here.

edfromnj,

Welcome to the forum.
Please let us know if the problem comes back after reinstalling. I am sure we will find a solution all together.

Ok, im back on the internet, but a reinstallation has caused a host of other issues. IE seems to be spotty while chrome runs flawlessly. windows wants to install 89 updates. After the updates install I will post back again and see if I encounter more bugs.