XP keeps rebooting after downgrading to SP1

Emerson

Well Windows has been getting rather slow of late. I've about 6 usernames on the one laptop and things have obviously become a little disorganised.

I decided a reinstall of XP might help.

Put the dell install CD in and it said This version of windows is newer than the one on the CD - or something to that effect/.

Uninstalled SP2 in add/remove. Reinstalled XP.. But now when I get to the initial black XP Screen with progress bar (just after the bios), about 2 seconds later, the machine reboots.

Selecting safe mode doesn't help.
I know there's a blue screen I'm missing out on as XP is set to reboot automatically rather than show it.

Is there a way to disable automatic reboots in the Recovery console?

Thanks..

angelofdeath

did you do a clean install or a repair? are there any other partitions on the disk? tried chkdsk /r in recovery console?

Emerson

I did a repair. There's no other partitions, no.

angelofdeath

try the checkdisk first, if that doesn't work format the drive and do a clean install

Emerson

Doing chkdsk /r now..

Emerson

I'd like to avoid a clean install.. I've alot of stuff on there. I'd loose all that, wouln't I?

I think there might be a driver conflict with SP1

Emerson

It took a long time to get from 50% to 51% in chkdsk.. I don't know whether that's a good thing or not..

Still at 51%..

angelofdeath

it'll take a while, just take the harddrive out, put it in a mates pc as slave and back up your stuff

Emerson

It's a laptop HDD.. Any way of doing it over lan/usb with my pc?

angelofdeath

not without an ide convertor, they go for like 30 quid i think

(edit: thought they cost more, http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=103373&cks=PRL, http://shop.store.yahoo.com/insidecomputer/la2tode3hadr.html)

Emerson

Are the Documents and Settings folders and others deleted when doing a clean install - or is it just C:\Windows?

Cryos

Emerson wrote:

Are the Documents and Settings folders and others deleted when doing a clean install - or is it just C:\Windows?

Well if you do an install of windows without a format or repair then you loose c:\ windows and your documents and settings folders.

Capt'n Midnight

On DELL's you could try
Options - rename the c:\windows folder and rename the c:\program files and c:\documents and settings folders in DOS then you can install windows without inheriting much. - The main fly in the ointment is that dell's tend to be formatted NTFS !

Other options use NtBackup to backup the files you want before the reinstall, use a linux boot disk to shrink the NTFS partition so you can set up a drive to backup stuff to..

Emerson

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

On DELL's you could try
Options - rename the c:\windows folder and rename the c:\program files and c:\documents and settings folders in DOS then you can install windows without inheriting much. - The main fly in the ointment is that dell's tend to be formatted NTFS !

Is there any way to access these folders after they've been renamed?
I'm assuming they're encrypted. My folders, so I've got the password if I could "log-in" to them through some sort of utility.

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Other options use NtBackup to backup the files you want before the reinstall, use a linux boot disk to shrink the NTFS partition so you can set up a drive to backup stuff to..

Can I access NTBackup through the recovery console?
I can't access DOS, even when I select it in the Safe Mode menu. The machine just reboots when it hits the Windows XP logo

Emerson

gah! Can't rename Documents and Settings folder.. "Access is denied"

Emerson

Knoppix alows me to access and open all files in Documents and Settings.
I can't however Rename or copy any of the files or folders to another directory.

I plugged my USB HDD in and I can get into the directories in that. All of the ones I created before in Windows.
I still can't copy anything to the USB HDD. I can't seem to create a new folder or write anything to the USB hard drive in this version of Linux.

I can see all of the files that I must back up before I take the plunge in Knoppix. But how to?

commited

Are you booting from CD?

You can get a 3.5" - 2.5" converter dirt cheap on ebay if you wanna rescue your data.
If you boot from an XP CD then it should give you the option to format the hard disk etc.

osmethod

If your still having grief you could try using a dos network boot disk.

Boot up the laptop with the Net Boot Floppy and get it to log onto another pc.

Download "NTFSDOS" from http://www.sysinternals.com and run it from the floppy. It'll mount the "NTFS partition" for you in read only mode.

Map a share from the 2nd pc using: net use F: \\2ndpc\backup

Use xcopy c:\docs\*.* /s /e f:\ (you get the gist)

Might work for you...

osmethod