After you apply Windows 2000 Service Pack 2 (SP2), previously installed hotfixes may no longer appear in the Add/Remove Programs tool in Control Panel. The hotfixes are still installed, but you lose the ability to uninstall them.

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When you apply a hotfix, the SERVICE_PACK_NUMBER entry from the included Hotfix.inf file is written to the registry. This registry information is used as the definitive list of hotfixes that are installed on the computer and is used by the Add/Remove Programs tool in Control Panel for manual removal of the hotfixes.

Many previously released Windows 2000 hotfixes set the SERVICE_PACK_NUMBER value to 2. The Windows 2000 SP2 Update.exe installer removes the registry information for hotfixes in which the service pack number is less than or equal to the currently installed service pack. Therefore, when you install SP2, the installer removes the registry entries for these hotfixes.

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No action is required because the hotfixes are still installed on the computer. Although the registry entries for these fixes are removed, previously installed hotfixes are still listed in the Service Pack "uninstall" file area. To view this list:

1.	Locate the Spuninst.inf file in the %SystemRoot%\$NtServicePackUninstall$\Spuninst folder.
2.	Open the file and find the [Reg.Restore.Keys] section.
3.	Find the entries that look like this (where Qnnnnnn is the Microsoft Knowledge Base article number of the installed hotfix): HKLM,SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Hotfix\Qnnnnnn,,reg00001 The Microsoft Knowledge Base article number in the key is a hotfix that was installed prior to installing SP2.

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Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in some hotfixes released before Windows 2000 SP2.

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Microsoft began creating post-SP2 hotfixes during the testing phase of SP2. After SP2 testing began, new hotfixes could not be added to SP2 without reinitializing the test. Therefore, it is possible to have a hotfix that is released before the release of SP2 that was not included in SP2.

For additional information, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

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