MSI Installer Problem

I decided to try to resurrect my old XP machine, which hasn't been use in years. I plugged it in, and it ran fine. I installed networking software, and it promptly told me to install 105 Windows Updates. Anyway, after doing this and updating and uninstalling other out-of-date stuff, all of a sudden the PC was continually accessing the HD, and trying to access the floppy drive (after a reboot). I looked at the processes running, and it looks like the MSI installer was the culprit. So I rebooted into the safe mode, and went into the system environment, and the installer log was continually recording the following error: Detection of product {B0255743-165B-48D5-8DA8-37DFB9930014}, feature 'shared' failed during request for component '{4EC22343-806F-45BE-AFF5-ADAFCD97EC48}'&#x000d&4x000aj
Those numbers looked like registry keys, so I opened up regedit, and did a search, but couldn't find either of them (no surprise there). So is there a way to find out what it's trying to install, or what the component it's looking for is? BTW, I am using this as a learning experience. I tried using system restore, but that failed on every restore point I used. If I can't fix it, I found my custom Norton Ghost boot disk, and will just install an image off my external HD, if that works. (I did that once before, and that's pretty slick). I want to use this PC to get familiar with Linux, but would like to make it dual boot, and have it working on both Linux and XP, if possible.
 
please go to start/shutdown/ and look at the shutdown icon , see if there is a little shield icon over the button, this tells you that the pc has to shutdown, NOT restart, to install however many updates needed to install with a shutdown, please check this and shutdown the pc, depending on how many updates it will take awhile. let me know the results
 
I should have included that info in my original post. All the updates installed OK, except for one that failed (KB2833941 Security Update for MS.NET Framework 1.1 SP1 on Windows XP). I tried to reinstall it again, but it fails. Also, everytime I shut down XP (even if I'm not trying to rerun the update), during the shutdown process, it says "Installing update 1 of 1". I thought maybe I shouldn't have installed all 105 updates in 1 batch -- if I restore the image, and do this again, maybe I'll install 10 at a time, or something. Then again, maybe I got a virus, but I don't think so. Also, I tried to update Java, but the executable just stops, and doesn't do anything.
 
Thanks for the help. Unfortunately, it's not possible to install or uninstall anything, because the installer is busy trying to install something. So, I gave up, and used My Norton Ghost boot disk to (successfully) install an older image (from about 4,200 days ago). I guess I haven't used the PC since then. It's unfortunately that I don't have total control over processes (such as the installer) on my PC.
 
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