Repairing Windows XP

[John Webster]

On my desktop computer, Windows XP will not load. It is quite dead. I have 2
physical drives. I have the original disks for Windows. Will repairing
Windows using these CDs involve formatting the C: drive, or worse still the
whole drive? If there is a risk of losing data, which is not backed up, I
will buy a new computer and then recover the data by connecting each drive
in turn to a spare IDE slot in the new computer. I will then have a new
computer, which I didn't really plan on spending the money on, and I can
then reinstall windows on my existing computer which is currently useless.

These things take time, ie buying a new computer, or building another one
from components, as I did with this one. If I can safely repair Windows
using the original CDs, without losing any data, I would prefer to do that,
as I can get on with that straight away.

I shall eagerly await your valuable advice.

Thanks, John.

 

[Guest]

On my desktop computer, Windows XP will not load. It is quite dead. I have 2
physical drives. I have the original disks for Windows. Will repairing
Windows using these CDs involve formatting the C: drive, or worse still the
whole drive? If there is a risk of losing data, which is not backed up, I
will buy a new computer and then recover the data by connecting each drive
in turn to a spare IDE slot in the new computer. I will then have a new
computer, which I didn't really plan on spending the money on, and I can
then reinstall windows on my existing computer which is currently useless.

These things take time, ie buying a new computer, or building another one
from components, as I did with this one. If I can safely repair Windows
using the original CDs, without losing any data, I would prefer to do that,
as I can get on with that straight away.

I shall eagerly await your valuable advice.

Thanks, John.

Hi John,
No if you intended to do Repair you don't need to Format just Repair.
What on the second drive and where is the Data stored?.
If you can't perform a repair then the option to rescue your Data is to Hook
up the drives as slaves to another computer with the same operating system
and copy it to Removable storage.
Here is a link on Repair/Reinstall you may need it:
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm
HTH.
Regards,
nass

 

[peter]

Nass is right but what worries me is that you said Discs for XP.....XP is on
only one disc.
2 discs usually mean an OEM Recovery disk set.........and only the
manufacturer really knows what that does.
With some a non destructive repair is possible ..with others it just formats
and install without any input from you.
peter

 

[John Webster]

Hi Peter

Thanks for your attention to detail. I have not opened the box lately to
count the disks. I have a boxed Windows XP professional upgrade. Your
comments are useful though, as I was on the phone today talking to a
computer shop and he was talking about an OEM version of Windows XP. I need
to make sure that the version is not one of those system restore types. They
are a nuisance, as they don't allow a repair. You have to do a backup before
the reinstallation, as they wipe out everything. I don't have that luxury
this time. Nevertheless, I will buy a new computer first and then after
installing Windows on that one (the shop will do that), I will connect my
primary drive to the new computer, as the secondary drive, and then backup
all my data, if there is anything important, to the new computer's primary
drive. If I had done everything correctly, all the important data is sitting
on my current secondary drive. This I intend to do again. The primary drive
will have windows and program files, and the secondary drive will have all
my data. I guess I can back up from my secondary drive to the primary drive.

I have no reason to suspect that either of my drives is faulty, so I hope
this is the case.

Thanks for your help.

John

 

[John Webster]

Hi Nass

Thanks for your link to that website. This is just what I want. I have saved
it to my Favorites on this computer, so that I may refer to it while working
on the other computer.

Cheers

John