Installation keeps restarting

[chinchillas]

I was upgrading from Windows Me to Windows XP Professional when at the
installation
portion of "Removing temporary files", the process froze. I read at
Microsoft KB
(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307153) that I should delete the files
in the Windows
installation folder. I did this and then restarted the setup process
but now it simply
keeps rebooting during the "Installing Windows part". I've read about
40 official
articles to no success. I don't even remember how I ended up on
recovery console
but I can't access it because it keeps asking for the right password
and I never
even wrote one in the first place! I've been told I'm somewhere between
Windows Me and XP so I can't reboot from start-up floppies containing
either operation systems.

Please keep in mind that I can't perform a clean installation since I
don't want
to lose my data and I'm not very knowledgable when it comes to writing
commands or
finding files or drivers via prompts. I need to be told how to do so
step by step.
The knowledge base at Microsoft asumes you already know how to do it
and I don't.
It's very frustrating.

Hoping not everyone's on holidays so I can solve this problem asap.
Thank you

 

[bxf]

Before we go into a lot of detail: you mention floppies. Do you not
have installation CDs For ME and XP? If not then sorry, I don't know
how to proceed (doesn't mean somebody else doesn't know).

 

[bxf]

I should have also asked where your important data is. Is it in
Documents and Settings, or other, non-system files/folders?

 

[chinchillas]

Hello. I have a windows me start up floppy and CDs and only a windows
xp installation CD.
My important data is in Documents and Settings.

 

[bxf]

I believe the following would work, but I would really prefer for some
other people to confirm this before you actually try it. Unfortunately,
I am not at home and not at my own computer so I cannot experiment even
if I wanted to, and I've never worked on WIN ME so I don't know if
there is something particularly different in its structure from other
Windows operating systems.

If your XP CD is an UPGRADE CD (i.e. not a full XP CD), then you will
be prompted to insert your previous OS disk. I don't know how or if
your ME floppies would satisfy that requirement.

If your XP CD is a full installation CD (not an upgrade), then you can
start to install XP from your CD. At some point you will be prompted
with a question of whether you want to overwrite the existing Windows
installation, and you need to reply NO. You will be requested for a
name to be used for the Windows directory, and you can use anything
different from whatever ME uses (say WINXP, for example).

Windows XP will then be installed into C:\WINXP. If you are prompted
for a USERID at any time, make sure you use one that is different from
the one you used under your ME system.

Now comes the part I'm not so certain about. I believe that whatever
entries you have in C:\Doduments and Settings under the USERID you used
in WIN ME will remain intact. Therefore, it should be possible for you
to use Windows Explorer to go to Documents and Settings and extract
whatever you need to some other folder you create elsewhere (e.g.
C:\SAVEDATA, though an external drive would be safer, if you have one).
For example, you can drag and drop from C:\Documents and
Settings\your_MEuserid\DOCUMENTS to C:\SAVEDATA. If you don't have an
external drive but your main drive has more than one partition, use
THAT to save your data.

If you saved your data to either an external drive or a partition other
than your C partition, then you can now do a normal XP install,
formatting the C drive, and that should be that.

Otherwise -

In reality, at this point you should have a working system. There is
nothing stopping you from continuing to use your XP system like this,
except that you will have leftover crap in your Documents and Settings
plus Program Files folders. You can manually delete things that you can
identify from each of these folders, as well as the old Windows ME
directory, but that may also not be so clean, or safe if you delete the
wrong things.

The best thing to do at this point is to move your saved data to an
external device, and then do a clean install, formatting the drive in
the process.

 

[Eric Booth]

>I was upgrading from Windows Me to Windows XP Professional when at the
installation
portion of "Removing temporary files", the process froze. I read at
Microsoft KB
(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307153) that I should delete the files
in the Windows
installation folder. I did this and then restarted the setup process
but now it simply
keeps rebooting during the "Installing Windows part". I've read about
40 official
articles to no success. I don't even remember how I ended up on
recovery console
but I can't access it because it keeps asking for the right password
and I never
even wrote one in the first place! I've been told I'm somewhere between
Windows Me and XP so I can't reboot from start-up floppies containing
either operation systems.

Please keep in mind that I can't perform a clean installation since I
don't want
to lose my data and I'm not very knowledgable when it comes to writing
commands or
finding files or drivers via prompts. I need to be told how to do so
step by step.
The knowledge base at Microsoft asumes you already know how to do it
and I don't.
It's very frustrating.

Hoping not everyone's on holidays so I can solve this problem asap.
Thank you

DO NOT DO an UGRADE. YOU MUST DO A CLEAN INSTSALL AFTER SAVING YOU DATA.
BEST TO AN EXTERNAL PORTABLE DRIVE
Upgrades from ME are prone to all sorts of troubles ---I speak from personal
experience
Eric Booth