Installation of Windows XP Professional

[browncombs]

Recently I purchase a Dell Dimension 4600 Desktop that
came with Windows XP Home Edition. I purchase Windows XP
Professional from my College, installed it, and realized
that I installed a completely new version instead of an
upgrade. The system installed sucessfully. Several days
later I transferred all of my files from an old computer
to the new computer using Intellimover software. The
file transfers were sucessful. I noticed that the
support features for my HP PSC 950 were not installed on
my system, therefore I installed the software for the HP
PSC 950, not realizing that my printer was installed with
the drivers that came with the Dell Windows XP Home
system. Shortly after that I was unable to use any of my
USB ports and there are a total of 8. I ran a diagnostic
test on the Dell system and all the USB hubs checked out
okay. I then attempted to reinstall Windows XP
Professional thinking this would correct the problem, but
with 34 minutes left into the installation I get an Error
Message: STOP: 0X000000C2. It stated that Windows was
being shut down to avoid damage to the system and when I
tried to restart the system upon shutting it down it
attempted to continue the installation from where it left
off, and I don't have a clue on how to abort this
installation completely and go back to the original
Windows XP Professional that was already installed. I
called Dell Support and they said it would involve
deleting my entire harddrive, but I have important
information that I don't wish to lose. Since I purchased
the software at the College I have Information Services
attempting to finish the installation that was in
progress, but they haven't gotten to it yet so I don't
know if they're going to be sucessful.
Can anyone help me?

 

[Michael Solomon \(MS-MVP Windows Shell/User\)]

The long and the short of it is, if you were installing over your previous
installation, there's no going back and the new installation seems to have
corrupted everything. You should have come here first as there were
numerous things you could have done short of an over the top reinstall.

If you are information is not backed up, it's likely that short of going to
a file recovery service, your information is gone. You may have one other
possibility if they can't complete this installation. You'll likely need
third party software such as Partition Magic, www.powerquest.com, create a
new partition on the hard drive, install XP, then try to bring over your old
data files from the other partition on which XP was installed.

Assuming the old installation file system was NTFS, you may receive an
access denied warning. This is how to deal with it as you would have a file
ownership issue:
Note, file ownership and permissions supersede administrator rights. How
you resolve it depends upon which version of XP you are running.



XP-Home



Unfortunately, XP Home using NTFS is essentially hard wired for "Simple File
Sharing" at system level.

However, you can set XP Home permissions in Safe Mode. Reboot, and start
hitting F8, a menu should eventually appear and one of the
options is Safe Mode. Select it. Note, it will ask for the administrator's
password. This is not your administrator account, rather it is the
machine's administrator account for which users are asked to create a
password during setup.

If you created no such password, when requested, leave blank and press
enter.

Open Explorer, go to Tools and Folder Options, on the view tab, scroll to
the bottom of the list, if it shows "Enable Simple File Sharing" deselect it
and click apply and ok. If it shows nothing or won't let you make a change,
move on to the next step.

Navigate to the files, right click, select properties, go to the Security
tab, click advanced, go to the Owner tab and select the user that was logged
on when you were refused permission to access the files. Click apply and
ok. Close the properties box, reopen it, click add and type in the name of
the user you just enabled. If you wish to set ownership for everything in
the folder, at the bottom of the Owner tab is the following selection:
"Replace owner on subcontainers and objects," select it as well.

Once complete, you should be able to do what you wish with these files when
you log back on as that user.



XP-Pro



If you have XP Pro, temporarily change the limited account to
administrative. First, go to Windows Explorer, go to Tools, select Folder
Options, go to the View tab and be sure "Use Simple File Sharing" is not
selected. If it is, deselect it and click apply and ok.



If you wish everything in a specific folder to be accessible to a user,
right click the folder, select properties, go to the Security tab, click
Advanced, go to the Owner tab,
select the user you wish to have access, at the bottom of the box, you
should see a check box for "Replace owner on subcontainers and objects,"
place a check in the box and click apply and ok.

The user should now be able to perform necessary functions on files in the
folder even as a limited account. If not, make it an admin account again,
right click the folder, select Properties, go to the Security tab and be
sure the user is listed in the user list. If not, click add and type the
user name in the appropriate box, be sure the user has all the necessary
permissions checked in the permission list below the user list, click apply
and ok.

That should do it and allow whatever access you desire for that folder even
in a limited account.



Make note of the third line in my signature, there is nothing more
empowering to a computer user and someone in college who lives and dies by
the files they create should never be without it.