Hi, Mike.
I've read your tale of woe - all 4 of your threads from yesterday plus this
one from today. You've had plenty of people who want to help. You've heard
the same advice over and over - and you've followed it, over and over. And
you've had the same unhappy result many times. Your files are still intact,
as you've reported to BoboTWG. So, once more, let's back up and start at
the beginning.
In the first line of this latest post, you've revealed something that you
hadn't said before:
I have Windows XP Professional w/ SP2 (OEM):
OEM! WHICH OEM version? The "generic" OEM that is available to computer
dealers generally? Or an OEM version that was customized to fit one maker's
hardware, such as Dell or HP or Gateway?
You've never told us much at all about your computer, so we don't know make
and model, or mobo/CPU/BIOS/chipset/controller, etc., if you built it
yourself. We know you have two HDs (150 & 250 GB), but we don't know if
they are IDE/ATA or SATA or SCSI or what? Since you've been using them, you
apparently are over the 48-bit LBA hurdles that often hamper drives >137 GB.
We don't know how they are partitioned or formatted. No, we don't HAVE to
know all those things, but if we don't know them, then there is always the
nagging feeling in the back of our minds that SOMETHING in those unknown
details may hold the key to your problem.
Also, you've never clearly said that you are following the instructions in
KB article 315341:
How to perform an in-place upgrade (reinstallation) of Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;q315341
It seems from your many posts that you are, but I'd like to confirm this.
Follow Method 2 in that KB article by booting from the WinXP CD-ROM. (It's
probably OK to have your second HD plugged in during the in-place upgrade,
but considering the problems you've had, leave it unplugged to be safe.) As
others have told you, don't choose "R" for Repair the first time it is
offered, in Step 3; that will start the Recovery Console. (The RC is very
valuable and exactly the right choice sometimes, but not when you are trying
to do an in-place upgrade.) Press Enter, accept the EULA and, when you get
to Step 5, then press "R" to Repair the existing WinXP installation. Pay
careful attention to the next few screens; if you have only one Windows
installation, it should be pretty straightforward, but since these screens
sometimes refer to disk locations by drive number and partition number,
rather than by drive letter, it's easy to get lost. Also, when it does use
drive letters, they are not always the ones we expect to see, especially if
we have a non-standard set of HDs (such as mine, which typically boots from
the SCSI drive, not from IDE). This does not seem to be a problem in your
case, but pay attention to the details in these screens, anyhow.
As you probably know by heart by now, one of the first things WinXP Setup
does is detect your hardware configuration; then, as it installs WinXP, it
custom-tailors it to fit YOUR hardware. If your OEM setup has some exotic
hardware for which drivers are not on the OEM WinXP CD-ROM, you'll need to
install WinXP without that hardware - if possible - and then add the drivers
later. If that hardware is critical for WinXP to be able to boot at all,
then the drivers must be integrated into your copy of WinXP during Setup.
For example, early in Setup, you should see a message flash at the bottom of
your screen saying something like "Press F6 to install drivers for mass
storage controllers". If your boot hard drive is not the typical IDE/ATA,
then you probably need to have drivers for your HD/controller combination on
a floppy, press F6 when invited, then wait for instructions as to how to use
that floppy to install the drivers. For such a non-standard drive (SATA,
for example), Setup knows how to partition and format it and copy WinXP's
files to it, but it does not know how to BOOT from such a drive without
those supplemental drivers - and the only way it knows to get those drivers
is from a floppy during Setup. The typical symptom of this problem is
failure to boot from the HD into GUI mode to complete running Setup, with a
BSOD complaining of Stop 0x7B, Inaccessible_Boot_Device - but not always.
That's why we always need to ask about the hard drive configuration -
especially in OEM systems with Big Drives.
Your symptoms don't seem to fit patterns that I've heard of. But if you
tell us more about your system details, someone here might spot the fly in
your ointment.
Some have suggested that you reformat and clean install WinXP. That's
always an option, of course, but it would also require reinstallation of all
your applications and restoration of your data from backup. A successful
in-place upgrade should preserve your old Registry and, therefore, your
installed apps and data - and most of your tweaks. If this were a new
system with little history, the clean install would make sense. But you
apparently have a lot of apps and data that are very important to you on
that drive, so I hope you can make the in-place upgrade work.
RC
