HELP - catastrophic Vista crash after attempting .NET update

Last week, I followed the normal Windows Update process however .NET 3.5
Service Pack 1 failed to install.

After my laptop rebooted, I've suffered a series of catastrophic and ongoing
crashes. Firstly, I noticed my user profile had been corrupted. Then, when
Vista eventually booted (after 7 attempts), IE8, messenger, and Outlook
wouldn't work.

Now, the desktop is completely unstable - it continually freezes, windows
explorer continually crashes and just trying to empty the recycle bin crashes
the desktop.

Disturbingly, in the last few days I've spoken to more than 30 other Vista
users suffering from exactly the same problems (corrupt user profile,
freezing, crashing, etc).

Does anyone have any insight into how to fix this mess - it's ruining my
business!!!

[Forwarded to Vista General and .NET newsgroups via crosspost]

John Blackwell wrote:
> Last week, I followed the normal Windows Update process however .NET 3.5
> Service Pack 1 failed to install.
>
> After my laptop rebooted, I've suffered a series of catastrophic and
> ongoing
> crashes. Firstly, I noticed my user profile had been corrupted. Then,
> when
> Vista eventually booted (after 7 attempts), IE8, messenger, and Outlook
> wouldn't work.
>
> Now, the desktop is completely unstable - it continually freezes, windows
> explorer continually crashes and just trying to empty the recycle bin
> crashes the desktop.
>
> Disturbingly, in the last few days I've spoken to more than 30 other Vista
> users suffering from exactly the same problems (corrupt user profile,
> freezing, crashing, etc).
>
> Does anyone have any insight into how to fix this mess - it's ruining my
> business!!!