How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install
http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm
[Courtesy of Michael Stevens, MS-MVP]
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Nicholas
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"Robert Pitney" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message:
news:15ba001c385c3$93d591b0$(E-Mail Removed)...
| My father-in-law recently obtained the W32.Swen.A@mm
| virus that brought his Windows XP Home PC to its knees.
| Over the phone, I guided him through the removal
| instructions as posted on the Symantec web site.
| Unfortunately, he could not get the removal tool because
| of a lack of an Internet connection. After making the
| changes to the registry of the machine, he went to reboot
| and Windows failed to boot. I told him to put in his
| Windows XP Home CD and reinstall Windows XP with
| the "repair" option.
|
| The problem is that the repair option hangs the PC when
| it is installing hardware. It asks for a file
| viaagp1.sys, which my father-in-law did not know how to
| get, so he skipped the file and setup hangs about 2
| minutes later. I now have the PC in my possession and
| have repeated the same process, but this time I fed it a
| viaagp1.sys file downloaded from the Via web site. The
| machine still hangs before setup completes.
|
| Here's the problem: I cannot do a F&R or a normal
| Windows XP setup on this PC because this PC is the main
| PC for a church and there are lots of critical documents
| in the My Documents folders of various users. I suspect
| that there is a good Windows install sitting below the
| surface, but some flag at bootup makes it go backup into
| setup with the "setup is being restarted" screen. I have
| tried to boot into safe mode with networking to see if I
| can at least copy the critical files off of the PC to
| another machine so I can do a full install, but I keep
| getting a message the setup cannot run in safe mode and
| the PC reboots to the "setup is being restarted screen".
|
| I feel like I am in a catch-22 loop here and my Internet
| searches on how to stop the setup program from restarting
| at bootup have come up with nothing. Can someone please
| help me? I want to either find a way to make the repair
| install go to completion without hanging on the hardware
| portion of setup -OR- a way that will let me boot into
| safe mode with networking to copy the critical data off
| of the PC and I will then do a F&R. Can either of these
| be done, or is this church's data SOL? BTW, file system
| format is NTFS.
|
| Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!
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