Necessary Evil

I had to install Service Pack 2 on my XP machine at work today.
It was a necessary evil to be able to test an Internet Explorer hotfix.
This hotfix would save the users countless milliseconds of waiting for web pages to render.
I would be silently adored in the hearts of customer service officers around the country.
They would whisper "Homer... Hmmmm....Homer...." as the nice colourful flag in the top corner waved happily (it seems like only yesterday that it replaced the nice big blue 'e').

Necessary evil, eh?
Unfortunately, I should have re-evaluated the necessity of the action - for I truly underestimated the extent of the evil.
Due to some corporate restrictions on the XP build, the installation failed and then tried to back out.
How's this for an error message?

"Service Pack 2 installation did not complete"
"Windows XP has been partially updated and may not work properly"

So after it reboots it immediately presents me with the blue screen of death.
In a panic, I reboot again. Same thing.
The diagnosis from the Help Desk: My XP is well and truly stuffed. The PC needs to be reformatted, along with all those years of archived emails.

Doh! Doh! Doh!

Yep, I hate computers.