Windows just installed itself....Noooo!!!

[Franky G]

Not a good morning so far; left my newly created W2k SP4 disk in the
drive... started up this morning and while I wasn't looking booted
from cd. Next time I looked setup was installing windows, but i have
no idea if it's a fresh install or over the top of the existing. I
dont know because setup crashes with a blue screen 'bad pool error'!!
It got as far as trying to detect and install drivers for my hardware,
which there's quite a lot of.

The existing setup was like this, C drive had boot files on it (from
old W2K install) and the current install was on D. The current install
was already patched to SP4, if that makes any diffrence. Left to it's
own devices, anyone know where w2k setup chooses to install to? will
it choose an upgrade or fresh install... and most worryingly, will it
format without user intervention?

I hadn't got round to creating a new ERD...lesson learned. Any
suggestions most welcome,

FrankyG

 

[Franky G]

Every Win2000 CD I have seen would ask the user if
he wanted to boot from the CD or the hard disk. When
no response was given, it would default to the hard disk
after a few seconds.

Furthermore: Every Win2000 CD I have seen would ask
the user a number of questions before going ahead, e.g.
about the target drive.

I don't think you have a half-cooked installation. At worst
you may have some temporary installation folders,
starting with "$", which you can delete.

Actually, there is something else which I remember doing; After I had
created the W2kSP4 disk, I ran setup from within Windows to test the
disk. I quit setup just before it re-booted my PC. So perhaps when the
PC next rebooted, it picked up this aborted setup(ie the user
intervention had already taken place so setup carried on
regardless!)..is that possible?

I was trying to repair the system last night using recovery console,
and I did notice lots of folders with "$". I ended up just putting
another copy of W2k on another partition, had to leave before it was
fully installed this morning. So, I'll have a working PC with a fresh
copy of W2k on C: and a non-working W2k on D:. What now? I'm thinking
of deleting those "$" folders, then booting from CD again and trying
to re-install W2k on D:, that sound ok?

Last issue: Before this happened, I had upgraded to SP4 on the D:
drive, should it be ok just to use my W2kSP4 CD to carry out the
re-install? I'm sure I read somewhere about how to force a re-install
into the existing WINNT folder...anyone know what I'm talking about?

Thanks again,

FrankyG

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

"Pegasus \(MVP\)" <[email protected]> wrote in message

Actually, there is something else which I remember doing; After I had
created the W2kSP4 disk, I ran setup from within Windows to test the
disk. I quit setup just before it re-booted my PC. So perhaps when the
PC next rebooted, it picked up this aborted setup(ie the user
intervention had already taken place so setup carried on
regardless!)..is that possible?

I was trying to repair the system last night using recovery console,
and I did notice lots of folders with "$". I ended up just putting
another copy of W2k on another partition, had to leave before it was
fully installed this morning. So, I'll have a working PC with a fresh
copy of W2k on C: and a non-working W2k on D:. What now? I'm thinking
of deleting those "$" folders, then booting from CD again and trying
to re-install W2k on D:, that sound ok?

Last issue: Before this happened, I had upgraded to SP4 on the D:
drive, should it be ok just to use my W2kSP4 CD to carry out the
re-install? I'm sure I read somewhere about how to force a re-install
into the existing WINNT folder...anyone know what I'm talking about?

Thanks again,

FrankyG

I think you're making a mountain out of a molehill. There is no
"magic" to installing Win2000 into an existing folder - if the
folder c:\WinNT pre-exists then the installation process will
ask you where you want to install the new copy.

In view of the chequered history of you machine you should
decide where you want Win2000 installed, do a full installation
into that folder, then delete every other folder that might
contain some half-cooked installation.