[philthomas]

It should work as below ..... remember however that tis is a REPAIR Installation, so you will lose any SPs or Windows Updates. :

Boot with your XP CD and proceed as with Installation until you get to this screen, then Press Enter :



you will then get the licence agreement and the next screen will give you the Repair option, so hit "R" :

[rondragon]

No, I don't get that screen. The CD I have is OEM software which may have something to do with it?? It is not the original Windows CD. I bought it as an upgrade.

When I boot from the CD, the setup files load and then after 5mins or so I come to a screen which lists my partitions asking me where I would like to install Windows. Unfortunately, I now seem to have multiple copies of Windows XP when I boot. Prior to this fiddling I had the option of XP of the Recovery Consol. Now I have 3 copies of XP!!?? and the recovery console.

I then did a google search and realised that the boot.ini file is related to the boot screen so I deleted two of the occurances of windows (I made of copy of boot.ini) but now windows loads without the option of the Recovery Console?? (although I left the line in boot.ini). I seem to be reaching the limits of my computer experience here and realise that a false move could mean that I will have to do a clean install which is something I would rather not do right now.

-------------------------
boot.ini with the 3 occurances of Windows

[boot loader]
timeout=1
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOW S.0
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS.0="Mic rosoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows Recovery Console" /cmdcons

----------------------------
boot.ini where i removed the 2 'false' windows xp

[boot loader]
timeout=1
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows Recovery Console" /cmdcons

----------------------------

Recovery Console no longer an option at boot up and windows boots directly (no BSOD thought!!!)

[rondragon]

Also,

I want to delete the Windows setup files that were copied from the CD. Where are they???

[rondragon]

I now boot up as before as I realised that the timeout flag was at 1 second - changed to 15 and now works fine.

However, I would still like to know

1. Where the failed setup files are and
2. How to repair windows??

Thanks

[philthomas]

I'm a bit confused .... you say the disk you have is not the original XP CD that is installed on this PC, but an upgrade OEM Disk ..... is this a genuine M$ Disk with the official hologram on it ?

The option to Repair should be there on any genuine CD.

[rondragon]

Sorry for the late reply.

I can confirm that my Windows CD does NOT have the repair option. After searching on the web it seems that I am not the only one. I'm sure it's because I'm not using the original Windows disc.

No matter. I've not had a blue screen in a few days!! (touch wood etc). I have a little software clearout. I noticed from CCleaner that I seemed to have various versions of MS Office: XP, 2003 and 2007. So I removed ALL Office files and the main registry entries, using CCleaner to clean up the remaining registry entries. I then reinstalled a fresh MS Ofiice 2007. After that the PC was behaving better but still the odd BSOD. I then did the same thing for Adobe programs althought whilst doing it the PC did 'hang' several times. However, after a fresh install of Adobe Acrobat and a general thorough good clean out (defrag, chkdsk etc) I've not had a blue screen since. I am not that naive though to think that everything is sorted as our old friend BSOD might pop back anyday. Both motherboard and OS hard drive are old so I will replace and clean install WIndows one day when I have the time. If I get another Blue Screen after that I will kill myself!!!

Thanks for all you help.

Cheers,
ron

[philthomas]

Sounds promising ..... keep your fingers crossed

[rondragon]

Oh, just another thing. When I boot from the Windows CD the CD loads setup files for about 5 minutes and then I get the following screen (the picture used is from my laptop NOT PC but is effectively the same):

[philthomas]

Is this a genuine M$ Disk with the official hologram on it ?

[rondragon]

Yes the CD has the hologram on it.

I've just switched on my PC to get the 7E stop error!

I knew it was too good to be true. Any thoughts?