XP needs repair

[ssmith]

I have a Toshiba laptop. When I started it today, it
stated that the following file has become corrupted (but
it just listed a diretory ...\config32\system) and told
me to start the XP Home setup and hit 'r' to repair.
That would be easy to do if I had the CD's, but Toshiba
only provides an image that would format the hard drive!
So, I'm going to buy XP, but I want to purchase XP Pro so
that I'm at least purchasing something I didn't already
buy. Here's my question: I will essentially be
upgrading a broken XP Home edition to XP Pro. Will the
XP Pro setup recognize the existence of XP Home for the
upgrade to occur? Does the system being upgraded need to
boot properly for the upgrade to occur?

Any help would be great, thanks.

 

[Juan Pablo Barrios [uy]]

Hi, I think that doing an upgrade will not solve your problem...
You need to repair that installation or do a clear one. If repair is not
possible... you don't have so much possibilities, be careful when doing the
clean installation if you have data that shouldn't be lost.

 

[sgopus]

depending on the version you buy, if Full version, no the
system does not need to boot into an existing xp to
install, just boot to the install cd and it will see the
existing system. if upgrade you might have to be in the OS.

if you can get into the OS, try doing a restore, this will
save you the purchase price of XP pro. try also using safe
mode.

 

[sgopus]

Doing an upgrade is in essence doing a repair, what is the
basis for your opinion???

 

[Box134]

I had a situation once with my laptop when it gave me the corrupted file
message. I figured I had nothing to lose so I powered down and re-booted.
Everything was fine next time around. If you haven't tried it, give it a
shot.

 

[Guest]

I agree it is 'in essence doing a repair' and that is
what I'm hoping will occur. I don't want to go out and
purchase XP Home since I essentially bought it when
purchasing the laptop. I figure since I have to buy a
version might as well upgrade too. However, does the
system need to boot properly to upgrade? At this moment
it fails immediately and does not boot. One person
suggested the 'restore' option. Is this a command line
utility? I have an old DOS boot disk I could use to get
to it? I'm going to check out the kb for this.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

In

depending on the version you buy, if Full version, no the
system does not need to boot into an existing xp to
install, just boot to the install cd and it will see the
existing system. if upgrade you might have to be in the OS.

No, it doesn't depend on the version at all. It's exactly the
same for the Upgrade version, as well as for the OEM version. All
versions of Windows XP come on bootable CDs.

 

[sgopus]

Sorry my question what is the basis for your opinion was
directed at Juan Pablo. sorry for the confusion.

No sorry the system restore is a function of windows, not
a command line entry.

A further question, you say the system fails to boot, does
this mean it can boot with a floppy?? or just fails to
get to windows?? if it boots to a floppy then it's a
windows failure, and your only recourse is to purchase
XP and see if you can do a repair, rather than a fresh
install, the thing to mention is this, laptops are
notorius for having
drivers for the hardware specific to the laptop and most
times
are not part of standard windows. I would suggest this.
if you purchase a copy of XP boot to the cd and closely
inspect your hd partitions, DO NOT reformat the entire
drive, you may have still have access to the restore
partition installed by the seller and those drivers. only
reformat if necessary, try the repair first, and reformat
only the primary partition, do not delete any extended
partitions.

 

[ssmith]

Will I be able to install the XP Pro upgrade over a
broken version of XP HE? I don't want to open the
(expensive) software without having a good feeling that
it will work. KB article 823614 addresses my problem but
is unavailable.

 

[Alex Nichol]

Here's my question: I will essentially be
upgrading a broken XP Home edition to XP Pro. Will the
XP Pro setup recognize the existence of XP Home for the
upgrade to occur? Does the system being upgraded need to
boot properly for the upgrade to occur?

You should be able to use that Pro CD (which is bootable) to do the
basic necessary R repair operations needed to get the existing system to
boot - guidance at
http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;en-us;307545

Once that is done, so the present system boots, you can run the Pro CD
from it and take Install, continuing with Upgrade. You can only do an
upgrade from a system that is bootable - if you try setup after booting
the Pro, then a New Install would make a fresh one *on top of * the
present one - this is not a very good situation, but would at least
allow you to back up data files. All programs would need reinstalling,
and the entry for the old system would need deletion from the
C:\boot.ini file