SP2 - Object reference not set to an Instance of an Object

Recently I installed SharePoint Portal SP2 and then when I tried to create a new portal (SharePoint Central Admin > Create a Portal Site) I immediately got the following error message "Object reference not set to an instance of an object. "
on page /sps/portalcreate.aspx.

At the same time the following waslogged in the Event Log
Event Type: Warning
Event Source: SharePoint Portal Error Reporting
Event Category: None
Event ID: 0
Description: W3WP.EXE: System.NullReferenceException @Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.ServerAdmin.PortalCreatePage.Page_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e)

Apparantly, when you install SharePoint SP2 it is meant to update the Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.dll along with changes to a number of files. In certain instances, while the update says its successfully installed, it doesn't update all the files. In my case portalcreate.aspx wasn't updated, and a entire section was missing.

The solution, from Microsoft, was to reinstall SP2 and check to see if the lines above exist. The error message might be different for different users, based on the pages that weren't updated - but the solution is still the same. Reinstall SP2 and hope for the best.