AVG 8 and Windows 2000 repair install BSOD

"Interesting" situation yesterday with AVG 8 free and a Windows 2000 install. Skip to the last paragraph if you want the core issue instead of the blow-by-blow narrative.

A customer had shut down his computer at the surge protector instead of logging off properly. When he restarted, the infamous logon/logoff loop happened, so he brought it to me.

I tried the usual registry edits to restore the path to his profile - no luck, more errors. I ran hardware tests, then pulled the drive and browsed it from another computer to find that my customer had upgraded AVG 7.5 free to AVG 8.0 free. I scanned it for malware, nothing serious found. I reinstalled the drive and started a repair install of 2000 SP4 as the registry had not been backed up recently and I had other computers to fix. After file copying and restarting, the install bluescreened with an 01E stop error referencing a driver exception. So much for saving time with the repair install! I tried to boot into safe mode with networking. Same result. Tried again, safe mode no networking. The install finally ran, albeit very slowly. It went fine until configuring IIS and network services. I clicked "ignore" at the errors and the install completed. Hooray! Fresh system files, problem solved!

Tried a reboot into normal mode, same error. OK, not solved. Back to safe mode, thought about it a bit, and realized that AVG 8.0 was the only significant change to the system since last time I worked on it. I then attempted to uninstall AVG 8.0. It reported that it cannot proceed as Update Rollup 1 is not installed. I pulled the drive again, downloaded the update on another computer, replaced the drive and attempted to install the rollup in safe mode. Nope, won't even start extracting files.

Catch-22. Grisoft does not offer a standalone uninstaller. The regular uninstaller would not run without Update Rollup 1. Update Rollup 1 would not install in safe mode, though it is supposed to. Maybe it was because of the missing files from the repair install. At any rate, I was stuck.

The only option that presented itself was messy and time consuming. I started regedit and removed every instance of AVG I could from the registry. Reboot into normal mode, finally got the desktop. I then ran sfc to install the networking files missed during the safe mode install. Then, I installed Update Rollup 1, then reinstalled AVG 8.0 and finally uninstalled it for good. I replaced it with Anti-Vir and Site Advisor and reinstalled all the Windows updates. Joy and celebration at last!

My customer promises not to use the surge protector as a power switch and was much happier with the system's responsiveness and browsing speed with AVG gone.

Long story short, performing a repair install of Windows 2000 SP4 with AVG 8.0 installed will cause an unbootable system. Update Rollup 1 needs to be applied to avoid the blue screen. Update Rollup 1 is theoretically installable in Safe Mode, but it wouldn't in this case. Maybe there's a better workaround than blowing chunks out of the registry? Is it possible to slipstream updates other than Service Packs? At any rate, hope this saves someone a bunch of aggravation in the future.