Windows XP install crashing at 34 minutes remaining

  • Thread starter Thread starter rangitotogirl
  • Start date Start date
R

rangitotogirl

I'm a bit worried. My sister's Windows XP Home Edition computer failed to
start Explorer and Internet Explorer yesterday. As you can imagine she
hasn't done a backup ever and I was unable to do one because of the problems
she was experiencing

I tried reinstalling Windows XP however it is failing at 34 minutes
remaining and giving me the lovely blue screen. I have researched the
Microsoft site and it tells me about various devices and things which might
be causing it. I have followed the instructions for slipping in the service
pack with no success so suspect it is another issue. Basically it just
keeps on going round and round and crashing at 34 minutes.

Other knowledgebase articles suggest renaming device drivers and have warned
me that I might lose data in her users folder. My problem is that I can't
work out how to bring up the command prompt and get to the c drive. Can
someone tell me what I need to do at this point to be able to access the c
drive.

I have tried creating a boot disk (unfortunately from XP Professional, not
Home Edition) and while I can see the floppy drive with it, I cannot change
to the c drive.

I managed to do it by fluke at one stage last night when I didn't need it
and now that I need to know how to do it, can't remember what I did.

Hoping one of you can help me.

Robyn
 
If you press F8 at startup can you get into "safemode" or when you boot from
the CD do you have the option to use the repair console. If you can get into
"safemode" you may be able to use "last known good config".

see how you go
Neil
 
neil said:
If you press F8 at startup can you get into "safemode" or when you boot from
the CD do you have the option to use the repair console. If you can get into
"safemode" you may be able to use "last known good config".

see how you go
Click to expand...

Thanks for your reply.

I've tried using safemode but it wouldn't let me do anything the first time
around, now it's not coming up as an option. If I select F8 it lets me boot
from CD allows me to continue trying to upgrade windows. Doesn't call it
the repair console but I think it's the same thing.

I've got another problem now though. Because it was looping I had to crash
it out at various intervals to try other things and now I've crashed it out
at the wrong time so it doesn't get as far as 34 minutes remaining and just
gives me a black screen after its initial attempt to start windows.

Any idea how to get to the command prompt. I have tried using F10 with no
success.

Also tried creating a Windows 98 start up disk which detects the CD Rom but
not the C Drive.

Have tried creating the Windows XP Startup disks with Service Pack 1 and
this fails on the second disk even though I have recreated it twice with
different disks (must be a faulty file).

I'm starting to go nuts.
 
I'm not aware that F10 will do anything. The reason the win98 disk will not
see the C:\ drive is probably because it is NTFS and "DOS" cannot read that
type of file system.
If you have the boot sequence set to boot from the CD and you don't have a
repair or recovery console option when you do boot from the CD then I'm a
little stuck myself. If I think of anything else I'll post back.

Neil
 
neil said:
Hi,
More info, if you are unable to use the recovery console try this:
http://www.ntfs.com/boot-disk.htm
Click to expand...


Hi Neil

You rock. This is the first positive thing I've had for the last 36 hours.
Although it is rather limited I am able to see for the first time that I
have not lost the info in My Documents which was another thing in the
knowledge base that I had read was an issue with running the XP Upgrade
again.

I'm off to get a USB to IDE cable today in the hopes of backing everything
up properly. I'll then start again, probably format the disk and start from
scratch or do a fresh Windows XP install from scratch.

Is there anything I should know here so I don't get myself into trouble.

I'm guessing if there is a corrupted device driver that I will stiff have
this issue to deal with at 34 minutes remaining.

Robyn
 
Not sure about using the USB you'll have to see if the boot disk detects
USB, if not can you temporarily connect the IDE drive to a IDE cable inside
the PC.???

Very best of luck, hope you get what you need

Neil
 
neil said:
Not sure about using the USB you'll have to see if the boot disk detects
USB, if not can you temporarily connect the IDE drive to a IDE cable inside
the PC.???

Very best of luck, hope you get what you need
Click to expand...

Hi Neil

Just letting you know I've got everything working again. I ended up
dismantling my external CD Writer and connecting the cable to the hard
drive, so I could connect it my computer and get a backup The purpose of
the USB connection was so I could hook it up to another omputer, perform a
backup and a virus scan as I hadn't been able to do any of these before
beginning. Turns out that there were a couple of different viruses which
probably caused the problem in the first instance.

After this I did a fresh Windows XP install which worked without the errors
this time and I was able to get everything going. I didn't want to do this
without a backup as I didn't want to risk losing any data, especially the
stuff in the user profiles. I had to recreate a few things of course and
I've had to leave the last of the software for my sister to install as she
didn't bring it all over but it looks like everything is pretty much
recovered.

Thanks again for your help.

Robyn
 
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