Problems after reinstalling Win XP Pro

[Colin Foster]

Hello
This is a slightly long posting, please bear with me.
Using a Dell Inspiron Laptop & the battery ran out of
juice (I'd got it plugged in, but power wasn't switched
on!) The result was that the pc went into hibernation.
When I realised this, I switched on the charger properly,
but pc wouldn't re-start fully. So I switched it off.
When I restarted it, I got a Blue Screen & error C0000135
stating that User32.dll was missing & reinstallation
might help.
Did soem routing around on the NGs & found a thread which
suggested resetting laptop to boot from CD & re-install
WinXP. This I did, chosing (as suggested) not to "Repair"
as I needed to still have my old files available
& "repairing" would wipe them.
The situation, now , is that I've got a new user set up
together with an "All users" and "All Users.windows"
a "Username" and "Username.laptop" folders if I use
Explorer, but only one User when I log on at startup.
The main issue is that none of my programs will run as my
laptop now gives error messages such as "The application
must be installed to run" even though I can use Explorer
to find it.
Any suggestions???

 

[Bill James]

What you have now are 2 installs of XP with nothing but the base OS programs on the new installation. A better choice would have been to choose to Repair the old instance, but since you are at this point you can take advantage of that to recover any data files that you need from the old instance and copy them to removable storage. Then do another Repair, selecting the old installation to repair. Hopefully it is repairable and you can then boot to it and have everything as it was before the problem. If that is the case, you can remove the newer installation to recover the drive space, or you could just leave it for future emergency repair use if drive space is not an issue. If repairing the old install doesn't work, you will need to reinstall all programs in the new install and copy back the data files you saved, followed by deleting the old unusable installation once you are sure you have everything you need from it.

--

Bill James
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User

Win9x VBScript Utilities » www.billsway.com/vbspage/
Windows Tweaks & Tips » www.billsway.com/notes_public/

 

[Colin Foster]

Bill,
Thanks for that. As soon as I've finished copying the files that I want to
keep I will try it out. WHich version of XP would you suggest that I try the
repair with? I have WinXP Home that was alreadyinstalled onto the Laptop, or
WinXP Pro SP1 which I used to upgrade? I've seen a Knowledgebase article
which seems to indicate that SP1 would prevent this happening in the future,
but I thought that I would just check, first.

Thanks...computers...dontcha just luv em!!

What you have now are 2 installs of XP with nothing but the base OS programs
on the new installation. A better choice would have been to choose to
Repair the old instance, but since you are at this point you can take
advantage of that to recover any data files that you need from the old
instance and copy them to removable storage. Then do another Repair,
selecting the old installation to repair. Hopefully it is repairable and
you can then boot to it and have everything as it was before the problem.
If that is the case, you can remove the newer installation to recover the
drive space, or you could just leave it for future emergency repair use if
drive space is not an issue. If repairing the old install doesn't work, you
will need to reinstall all programs in the new install and copy back the
data files you saved, followed by deleting the old unusable installation
once you are sure you have everything you need from it.

--

Bill James
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User

Win9x VBScript Utilities » www.billsway.com/vbspage/
Windows Tweaks & Tips » www.billsway.com/notes_public/

 

[Bill James]

To do a repair, use Home or Pro based on what the install was that is being repaired. It is unclear whether the damaged install was Home that you upgraded to Pro, or just the initial install of Home. Whatever, repair it with the OS version that was running at the time that installation became corrupted.

--

Bill James
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User

Win9x VBScript Utilities » www.billsway.com/vbspage/
Windows Tweaks & Tips » www.billsway.com/notes_public/

 

[Colin Foster]

Hi Bill,
Just finished repairing, but it only repaired the "second" installation. I
even tried to set up a new user use this to transfer all of my files from
my original user to the new one created as part of the Repair. All of the
icons are there, e.g for Office, but when I click on them, I receive an
error message stating: "The application must be installed to run. Please run
setup from the location where you originally installed the application".
This is in spite of the fact that if I look in C:\program files\msoffice the
programs are there for all the world to see! So it looks as though I've got
to go back to square one and start from scratch as I suspect that this is a
Registry problem caused when the computer ran out of battery power.
Now, at the moment I have a number of "duplicate" users set up & programs,
etc, within the Program Files area of my pc. Presumably, the easiest way to
get rid of these is through windows explorer and delete them, then
re-install WinXP Pro SP1 (again!!) and then re-install the programs from
scratch? As the current re-installation cant find any of the program files,
I can't see that I'll be doing any (more!) damage by doing this, but before
I do, I thought that I would ask!
Thanks for your help so far.
Regards
Colin Foster

To do a repair, use Home or Pro based on what the install was that is being
repaired. It is unclear whether the damaged install was Home that you
upgraded to Pro, or just the initial install of Home. Whatever, repair it
with the OS version that was running at the time that installation became
corrupted.

--

Bill James
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User

Win9x VBScript Utilities » www.billsway.com/vbspage/
Windows Tweaks & Tips » www.billsway.com/notes_public/

 

[Bill James]

Setup did not give you a choice of which Windows installation to repair? If so the first one might be corrupted so bad it can't be repaired. Sounds like you copied over the Program Files directory to the new installation. That doesn't work, you have to reinstall each program to have it work in the new installation.

--

Bill James
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User

Win9x VBScript Utilities » www.billsway.com/vbspage/
Windows Tweaks & Tips » www.billsway.com/notes_public/

 

[Colin Foster]

Hi Bill,
No, I just had the one optionto repair. I think that the problem all started
when the battery died when I thought that it was being recharged as I noted
in my first posting.

Hey, ho, I'll take everything off the laptop and start from scratch (I might
as well if I've got to reinstall each program anyway).

Thanks for your help.
Regards
Colin Foster
Setup did not give you a choice of which Windows installation to repair? If
so the first one might be corrupted so bad it can't be repaired. Sounds
like you copied over the Program Files directory to the new installation.
That doesn't work, you have to reinstall each program to have it work in the
new installation.

--

Bill James
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User

Win9x VBScript Utilities » www.billsway.com/vbspage/
Windows Tweaks & Tips » www.billsway.com/notes_public/