XP Pro SP2 Repair - lost desktop and settings

[Guest]

I have a well maintained (virus, spyware, updates) Dell with XP Pro
installed. I encountered a dreaded blue screen fatal error and Win wouldn't
load. I recently moved and could not find my Dell provided CDs so used an
extra XP Pro CD with valid key and ran for a Repair. Repair took and
reloaded what appeared to be a significant portion of Win. Upon completion,
my logis were there as were all of my program files on the HDD as expected
but my desktop was blank, my settings were gone and my prefernces, networking
settings etc. were gone. How can I load these from my previous installation?
I obviously could not run a files and settings xfer util before repairing.
Can I "undo" the repair and try another approach? Any input will be mostly
appreciated.

 

[Patrick Keenan]

I have a well maintained (virus, spyware, updates) Dell with XP Pro
installed. I encountered a dreaded blue screen fatal error and Win
wouldn't
load. I recently moved and could not find my Dell provided CDs so used an
extra XP Pro CD with valid key and ran for a Repair.

This is actually somewhat risky, as the key change can cause a loop at
activation that basically requires a clean install to bypass.

Repair took and
reloaded what appeared to be a significant portion of Win. Upon
completion,
my logis were there as were all of my program files on the HDD as expected
but my desktop was blank, my settings were gone and my prefernces,
networking
settings etc. were gone. How can I load these from my previous
installation?
I obviously could not run a files and settings xfer util before repairing.
Can I "undo" the repair and try another approach?

No, you cannot undo the repair now.

Any input will be mostly
appreciated.

Try creating new accounts and see if they work. If they do, try migrating
the data.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/811151

If this doesn't work, consider that your registry is damaged, and compare
the time you'll spend fixing it with the time to start clean - from a
formatted partition. Make your judgements from there.

Apparently, part of what forced you to take action was registry damage.
Repair installs don't really go a long way towards fixing that, so what
you're probably seeing is the remnants of the damage. It's *possible*
that an old restore point might help.... or not.

HTH
-pk