P
pheasant
I made a mess of a repair installation of XP Home I got an NTLDR fault), and
managed to install a new, parallel copy of XP in a different folder on the
same partition. What I meant to do was do a Repair install of course.
When I accidentally added the new XP installation (instead of overwriting
the old system), I could see the faulty Windows package sitting in its usual
folder structure, so it is still there - in effect, I opted to install a
parallel package, and checked the 'keep original files' option, so that's not
surprising.
Now I have a perfect installation (in c:\windows2) and a broken one, in
c:\windows. Of course, all my software is registered to the old, faulty
setup, and my new desktop is virtually empty ! It would be a daunting task to
reinstall all my software; can anyone think of a simple way to fix the old XP
installation ?
I wondered whether I could run a Repair install on the old setup (as I
should have done in the first place), then just delete the new one. However,
Recovery Console can only 'see' the new, healthy installation, so I can't get
at the old one to Repair it.
I have a full incremental data backup (a mirror in fact - I wondered about
just wiping the HD and restoring that, but it seems rather a large step !),
so I don't think any data is at risk. It's the pain of reinstalling tons of
software, pulling over huge e-mail folders, and reinstalling 10 devices !
Chkdsk shows the HD is fine.
In essence, my current problem is when I run an XP Home repair, the only Win
installation the system can 'see' is the new, clean one; the original XP Home
directory structure is still there, and the files (squillions of 'em) look
fine to me - in effect, I have c:\windows and c:\windows2, both fully
populated with all the necessary files (although there may be a few corrupted
ones in the original setup), but the XP repair setup can't see the first of
these.
A thought - can XP be installed (or reinstalled) from itself - ie. within
the files parked in the c:\windows directory ? There's a stack of exe files
in there !
Any thoughts ?
managed to install a new, parallel copy of XP in a different folder on the
same partition. What I meant to do was do a Repair install of course.
When I accidentally added the new XP installation (instead of overwriting
the old system), I could see the faulty Windows package sitting in its usual
folder structure, so it is still there - in effect, I opted to install a
parallel package, and checked the 'keep original files' option, so that's not
surprising.
Now I have a perfect installation (in c:\windows2) and a broken one, in
c:\windows. Of course, all my software is registered to the old, faulty
setup, and my new desktop is virtually empty ! It would be a daunting task to
reinstall all my software; can anyone think of a simple way to fix the old XP
installation ?
I wondered whether I could run a Repair install on the old setup (as I
should have done in the first place), then just delete the new one. However,
Recovery Console can only 'see' the new, healthy installation, so I can't get
at the old one to Repair it.
I have a full incremental data backup (a mirror in fact - I wondered about
just wiping the HD and restoring that, but it seems rather a large step !),
so I don't think any data is at risk. It's the pain of reinstalling tons of
software, pulling over huge e-mail folders, and reinstalling 10 devices !
Chkdsk shows the HD is fine.
In essence, my current problem is when I run an XP Home repair, the only Win
installation the system can 'see' is the new, clean one; the original XP Home
directory structure is still there, and the files (squillions of 'em) look
fine to me - in effect, I have c:\windows and c:\windows2, both fully
populated with all the necessary files (although there may be a few corrupted
ones in the original setup), but the XP repair setup can't see the first of
these.
A thought - can XP be installed (or reinstalled) from itself - ie. within
the files parked in the c:\windows directory ? There's a stack of exe files
in there !
Any thoughts ?