G
Guest
I have a hard disk that has had Windows XP Home running on it for some time. I attempted to repair the installation when something went wrong after starting the install process with the XP Home CD while logged on to one of the user accounts. Since I never got a 'Repair' option, I kept going through the motions thinking that the option would pop up at some point... but it didn't. Just as the installation process started "Now setting up Windows XP" (right after "Preparing to install..."), I turned the machine off to prevent further damage.
The current state of the system:
I have a HDD in the machine that boots up to windows installation screen that says "Windows Setup is Restarting" and then the machine promptly reboots and goes through the exact same process indefinetly.
---Boot.ini---
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect
---Boot.ini---
I have removed the HDD and installed it in another Windows XP Home machine so that I can copy over some critical user files. I have full read/write access to the entire HDD in question by way of this other machine.
When I change the partition(2) entries to partition(1) entries, the machine will reboot but I get an error saying that the computer is looking for hal.dll. I removed the HDD, put it back in my good machine, and confirmed that there was a hal.dll in the windows\system32\ directory. As to it's state of corruption, I can't tell you. As an experiment, I put the hal.dll from the good machine on to the HDD in question (after backing up the original!), put the HDD back in its machine, and the boot-up process just froze solid. I had to do a hard reset.
I backed up and then removed the directory c:\$WIN_NT$.~BT\ from the HDD but the machine still boots right into the "Windows Setup is Restarting" loop again.
So, I need to know what files I have to reset / redo / replace in order for the machine to see it's original XP installation.
Please help!
-Jon
The current state of the system:
I have a HDD in the machine that boots up to windows installation screen that says "Windows Setup is Restarting" and then the machine promptly reboots and goes through the exact same process indefinetly.
---Boot.ini---
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect
---Boot.ini---
I have removed the HDD and installed it in another Windows XP Home machine so that I can copy over some critical user files. I have full read/write access to the entire HDD in question by way of this other machine.
When I change the partition(2) entries to partition(1) entries, the machine will reboot but I get an error saying that the computer is looking for hal.dll. I removed the HDD, put it back in my good machine, and confirmed that there was a hal.dll in the windows\system32\ directory. As to it's state of corruption, I can't tell you. As an experiment, I put the hal.dll from the good machine on to the HDD in question (after backing up the original!), put the HDD back in its machine, and the boot-up process just froze solid. I had to do a hard reset.
I backed up and then removed the directory c:\$WIN_NT$.~BT\ from the HDD but the machine still boots right into the "Windows Setup is Restarting" loop again.
So, I need to know what files I have to reset / redo / replace in order for the machine to see it's original XP installation.
Please help!
-Jon