Restoring WSS 3.0 fails if update had been previously applied

I was working on a development environment (Windows Server 2003) when I decided to remove WSS 3.0 and reinstall it. I had a backup which i had created using the GUI wizards from within Central Administration.

You should have seen my surprise when I realized that the restore could not successfully be completed. I went through the process of removing and reinstalling WSS a couple of time but the result was the same. The steps I was following were identical.

a. Remove WSS from the Control Panel
b. Install WSS
c. Apply the WSS Update (KB932091)
d. Restore the backup.

It didn’t work. After spending a day and a half searching the Net for a solution something crossed my mind. I didn’t install the WSS Update before the restoration. I tried it and it worked!

After the successful restore, I applied the update and everything went back to normal