Reinstall Pain-Soothing Needed

[Guest]

Hello,
Recently my PC started losing power randomly and then would no longer
come on. A friend came over and diagnosed it as a fried power supply,
processor and motherboard. After he installed all the new parts we were
unable to get the PC to load up my XP desktop, He made several changes in
BIOS, but no luck. So we decided to upe the XP disk to "repair" the problem.
That did not work, so we reinstalled windows. That worked, BUT.....my PC
came up with a blank desktop. At first, I thought we might have accidentally
wiped the hard drive when reinstalling windows, but I found that all my
contents can be found under documents and settings if I go into my original
user name. I've tried using my programs this way but I get a fatal error.
My PC also acts as if this is the first time being used: I had to load
flash, it is asking to download the new IE, all the drivers for my drives
are gone, and I'm being told that I have 24 days left for windows activation
(since I installed this same windows disk on this PC before....

It seems like everything I need is still on my PC, just under this layer of
XP. Is there any to have my PC recognize my old desktop, items, programs,
downlods, reg keys........?

 

[Guest]

Thats simple enough,actually you reinstalled xp either to existing C:,or xp
is
now on another partition (D: E: or F: etc)..You should have (at xp cd
install menu)
selected,delete the partition(s),created one,then xp would format & do a
clean
install (a must for new MB,repairs wont cut it)...Youre only option,reboot
to xp cd,
perform the install as posted above....

 

[DL]

You need to run a repair installation on the *origonal* win installation.
All you have now is a completely new installation installed in conjunction
with the old
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

 

[Guest]

Hello Keith,

Deja vu, because I am going thru everything you are -- from losing power,
replacing power supply and motherboard to not being able to Repair when using
WinXP CD.

I'm using a back up pc (ie: old and slow)

It looks to me as if the answers volunteered were not satisfactory. Answer
#1 did not offer a solution and answer #2 offered a how-to on preventing the
problems, not solving them after the fact.

To make a long story short (long stories are rarely short though), my
problems began when I replaced some RAM. For no apparent reason, my system
was dead when I tried to restart it. 6 hours later, I gave it up and today
purchased new PSU and mobo. Installed just fine --- note that I have
installed a mobo before, and actually was quite successful doing a Repair
using the WinXP CD on that previous install. This time not so lucky.

Well, I decided to simply reinstall WinXP over the old one. This was a
mistake, I found -- a mistake I still have no answer to -- but like you, I
still have all my files and software. The problem is, WinXP created new
folders.

Note: I have not plugged into my network using that computer yet, so have
done no updates, nor done any networking for the new install. I also haven't
yet tried to access the previous software links, but I might -- it's worth a
shot.

For example, let's say your previous user name is "user". And let's say
when you did the reinstall, you again chose "user" as your user name.

WinXP took this info and decided to create sister folders to the originals.
Let's also assume you named your computer "computer" during the 2nd install
of WinXP. I can list what they would look like below:

Just go to C:\Documents and Settings folder and look inside -- here is the
list of folders in there:

•All Users
•All Users.WINDOWS
•Default User
•Default User.WINDOWS
•LocalService
•LocalService.NT AUTHORITY
•NetworkService
•NetworkService.NT AUTHORITY
•user
•user.COMPUTER

With that list of folders, you can see how WinXP created sisters of the
originals. It's also true that the original files are intact in their
original folders. Getting WinXP to recognize them on startup is the problem.
I think the answer Keith and I are looking for is how to best resolve the
issue and what our options really are.

Is there some workaround to remove (or ignore) those new folders and have
boot.ini recognize the old info?

Must we reinstall all the apps previously installed on the hard drive, even
though all the old folders remain intact within the Programs folder?

Is there a way to find an older restore point? If so, would it even help,
due to the new mobo?

Any kind of assistance to bring a resolution is greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,
Grant