[Problem]
Appearently the drivers for the Allied Telesyn kill a Windows 2000 installation that has Service Pack 4 installed. Some dll files seem to be overwritten on install, and the machine won't boot anymore.
[Solution]
Use a W2K CD (i used a W2K SP2) and use the "R" repair option in "fully automatic" mode.
Reboot.
Press F8 when the text-mode Windows loading bar appears. Choose "Boot last known working configuration". It should now boot to the login screen. Log on as Administrator, and dont be scared by the error messages - some dlls and drivers are broken now. Open the Device Manager, and do a "update Drivers" on everything that has a yellow question mark. If it asks for the driver cds, just tell it to look in:
C:\WINNT
C:\WINNT\SYSTEM
C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32
C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS
In case it can't find the driver file there, it will display its name - use the windows search to find the location of the missing file, then.
After installing all the drivers again, you should have LAN again. Norton appearently dies in this process, so best is to uninstall it right now (else you get a error window poping up every 2 seconds, taking the focus - very annoying).
Now, either per LAN or with CD, get the SP4 full network install .exe (WIN2K_SP4_DE.exe or alike). Execute it, and ignore the warning about overwriting the SP2 - in fact the machine is a SP2/4 mix now in this case, and we would like it to be stable SP4. Apply the SP4. If it ends with an weird error now, reboot the machine (try if it comes up normally already, if not boot the last working config again) and try to apply it again.
After SP4 is applied, and you rebooted, the machine should boot up normal again. Check your drivers and devices (in our case the NIC, Audio and gfx drivers were killed and thus reinstalled in the process before) are working now, and be sure to reinstall your anti virus solution as well as the newest DirectX.
*phew*
If that doesn't work, throw the goddamn box out of a window. Make sure not to hit anyone.
- Gilthanaz