Hi, Dave.
That partitioning advice you followed may have been based on the way we did
it in MS-DOS or Win9x/ME. In WinXP, we use Disk Management for all except
the initial formatting. When we boot from the WinXP CD-ROM, it offers to
create partitions and/or to format them, but this is intended only for the
"system partition" (almost always Drive C
and, if different, the "boot
volume" (where WinXP will install its "boot folder", usually \Windows).
Creating, deleting and formatting other partitions and logical drives is
done by using Disk Management; you don't need the CD-ROM for these
procedures, so there's no danger of running Setup by mistake. When you get
a chance, type "diskmgmt.msc" at the Run prompt and study the program and
its Help file; there are TONS of correct advice here.
From this distance, I can't really tell what WinXP Setup has done so far to
your machine. I do recall that there are several screens where Setup offers
the option to abort the install. Perhaps you just need to reinsert the CD
and let it continue to such a point and then abort. But I can't say that
for sure since I don't know just how far along your Setup is.
It may be that you told Setup to repartition your HD and do a clean install.
If so, it may already have followed your instructions to wipe out your prior
installation. :>( Only YOU know what YOU told it to do, and how much of
that has already been done, because we can't see your computer.
Maybe you could simply reboot at this point and see if your original WinXP
will still boot and run. If so, then try to clean up any mess left by the
aborted Setup, including temporary files that may have been left behind. If
WinXP won't boot, then try to boot from the WinXP CD-ROM and run the Repair
steps from the Recovery Console. If that doesn't do the job, try the
In-Place Upgrade as described in this KB article:
How to Perform an In-Place Upgrade (Reinstallation) of Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;q315341
If there is enough of your original WinXP left for this to work, this should
reinstall WinXP itself but preserve your installed applications and data.
Note that it is not intended as a timesaver; as soon as you get your
firewall and antivirus working again and get back online, go to Windows
Update and download and install SP1 (unless it's included on your WinXP
CD-ROM) and all the later security fixes, including the July one that
protects you from the Blaster worm. Plan on a half-day project; more if you
don't have broadband for downloading the updates.
If you need more guidance, tell us more exactly just how far Setup got and
exactly what the latest error message was.
RC
