Windows XP Pro Hangs after 29min remaining in setup

[Guest]

It all started with NORTON... system sluggish, videos and music choppy, you
know, the same ol story when it comes to space wasting memory hog programs. I
decided to kill Norton and uninstall it. I used RegCure to clean up the mess
the Norton Uninstaller uses, all is well. Reboot was fine. I decided to go
into the Windows Firewall and enable it, only problem is, I couldn't, it gave
me an internal error and said I didn't have access, (my user account is set
for admin rights as I am the only user) Next step was to reload the operating
system with the repair procedure, repair procedure appeared to work fine (not
having used it before I was not sure of what it was supposed to do and what
indications should be) Rebooted windows and the same problem existed. Reran
the repair feature, now the setup hangs with 29 minutes to go after it starts
the configuration phase of set up.

When booting Windows normally, all I get is the Windows XP logo in the place
of the users name icons... that's it, the moves moves freely, but no
interation with the GUI.

Rebooting into various modes of Safe Mode results in frozen screens.

I know the easiest thing is to reformat and start over, you know the story
here as well, no recent backup, important files on computer, blah blah blah.
What I would like to ask the community is this; is there a way that I can get
to the command line of the C\: that bypasses the safe mode options of booting?

How can I reset the system attributes for the entire system from the command
prompt?

Doing this will enable me to copy a couple of important directories to
either a flash drive or another hard drive attached to the system. After
that, I'll nuke it and kick it to the curb if need be and reload everything
fresh, but only after I can get into the drive externally of windows to copy
the data....

your assistance or suggestions is greatly appreciated! Thank you!

 

[Guest]

I think but I'm not sure.. You may have shut down your computer without
logging off properly. Your best bet say dealing with firewall, viruse or
active protection would be sytem restore. And your'e gonna have to update
everything.

 

[Guest]

Thank you George, I only have one problem, I am not able to get to a point
where I can use the system restore, the setup disk is in a endless loop. Is
there some boot disk out there that can get me to a C: Prompt external of
Windows XP so I can copy a couple of directories and then format the whole
mess? Thank you very much.

 

[Ron Badour]

This web site tells how to make Bart's Boot Disk:
http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1112

 

[Guest]

Ron -

Thank you very much for the suggested site, however I have been looking
around for a boot disk to copy directories off of a NTFS drive in a DOS
environment and have located one called NTFS Reader Boot Disk from
http://www.ntfs.com/products.htm
slip a little ways down the middle of the site and there is a program called
ReadNTFS.exe

This fits on a 1.44 floppy that you format using any Windows computer. It's
not too keen on USB devices (memory sticks) but it works well with a USB
powered Zip Drive. The only drawback is that it is very slow, but I'm not
complaining, it's better than trying to reconstruct 8 years of business tax
records not to mention the countless supporting documents.

In my searches for solutions, I have also located a Boot Utility CD called
Spotmau PowerSuite 2007 at: http://www.spotmau.com/purchase/purchase_list.htm
Directions are easy for creating a boot CD using the provided cd creator.

I hope this information helps others.

I have one last request, how do I save the emails from Outlook Express under
the current conditions of not being able to get into windows? I also going to
have the same problem with Netscape messages as well, any ideas? Again thank
you all for your assistance and guidance.

 

[Ron Badour]

If you want a suggestion, the easy way to get to your files is to connect
the problem hard drive to another computer (call it XY) using the ribbon
cable from HY's CDRom drive. If the problem drive has an NTFS partition,
the other computer's operating system must be 2000/XP and not W9X/ME.
Locate the files you need and transfer them to XY's hard drive.

I have not used Netscape in years so I can't help there. Outlook Express
has .dbx files (i.e., inbox.dbx) that you can capture and then you can use
the import procedure once your computer is running again.

 

[Guest]

G'Day Ron

Excellent idea! I'll give it a go as I have several test machines not being
used, hopefully the access rights for the defective files will not interfere
with the other systems ability to access the files & get them copied. I'll
post my results here and let the community know. Thank you again!

 

[Guest]

Adding to Ron, you need to scan this HDD thoroughly before moving these
files/Folder to avoid infection if the machine was infected.

 

[Guest]

As soon as it was connnected to the new computer I immediately did a full
scan of all files for everything, took about an hour, but that's a small
price to pay. Thank you for the additional advice.

For those that are following this thread, the moral of this story is: BACKUP
frequently!!