# XP reinstall/ repair issues



## rambler (Jan 20, 2004)

I have a several year old XP Dell computer that went bad on me. So I cleaned off the hard drive, and was going to reformat it & reinstall with the original CD. 

Along that path, it asked me if I wanted to repair XP? I thought, good learning experience, sure. Then format & install clean afterwards anyhow.... 

So, it does it's repair things, says it needs to reboot to continue, and gets to 'Installing Windows' part of the repair, only 33 minutes left. 

It stays that way for over 12 hours.... Many times. It will not finish the 'repair'. Gets hung up obviously. It is specifically 3/4 through installing devices.... 

It also will not allow me any other options at this point. I can boot off the CD, or I not. If I don't, it goes to the drive, and nothing to boot from. If I boot from the CD, it sees it's partial repair, & imeadiately starts trying to install XP again. I get no other choice or option. 

What can I do to get back to format & do a clean install? 


What brought this on (to make this long message longer....): My computer tried to upgrade itelf, without telling me, to XP Service Pack 2 on a dial-up connection. It got a few components sucked in. 

After that, I lost my device manager. There were _no_ devices in the manager. None. Couldn't get any to reload, or found. Everything _but_ the modem still worked, but could not add anything else, couldn't find any devices to look at. Totally empty manager. 

Tried different modem cards & external modem, could not install any of them. 

I do not know if this machine suffered a hardware problem (blip coming in the modem cord?) at the root of the issue, or the giant software upgrade it tried to do. I really wish I could format & start a fresh install, but it won't let me at this point. 

What can I do from here? 

--->Paul


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## backwoodsman7 (Mar 22, 2007)

rambler said:


> What can I do to get back to format & do a clean install?


I don't know if there's a way to get out of that from the XP install CD, and no one else has responded to that effect, so my guess would be no. So, you'll have to delete the partition.

If you have access to a broadband connection (or dialup and a few hours) and a CD burner, download GParted - http://gparted.sourceforge.net . (download the LiveCD version.) It's a Linux based bootable CD that's set up as a partition editor with a graphical interface, and is pretty easy to use.

Or, you can make a bootable floppy with fdisk on it. Here again my knowledge of XP is a little weak, so I'm not sure you can do it on an XP machine, but earlier versions of Windows will work. If you have access to a suitable machine, and can't download GParted, I'll tell you how to do that.



rambler said:


> What brought this on (to make this long message longer....): My computer tried to upgrade itelf, without telling me, to XP Service Pack 2 on a dial-up connection. It got a few components sucked in.


And people think _Linux_ is hard to use... (sigh) Windows makes most of its own problems and causes users no end of wasted time & headaches just trying to keep a computer functional. Linux doesn't do that, and has no more of a learning curve than Windows (and very little learning curve for those who already know how to use Windows). Anyone who can put a CD in a drive can install it, and it'll keep working forever without trashing itself like Windows does so often. So... this might be an ideal time for you to make the switch. I recommend PCLinuxOS - http://www.pclinuxos.com .

-Dan


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## comfortablynumb (Nov 18, 2003)

this is why XP has restore points.

keep them updated, and when a real problem pops up restore back to a good day.

or try going back to its first restore point when it was new.

people really neglect using this feature and it can cure A LOT of buggy problems.

not to mention of some of the dell hardware requires a dell proprietary driver, XP is going to choke on it.

when XP seems to go buggy, the first thing you should do is pick a good day in the past when it was working well and restore to that point.

or switch to linux and sell the xp disk on ebay.


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## comfortablynumb (Nov 18, 2003)

oh i went and gave PClinuxOS a drive.... thats a really nice verson, very very user friendly.

I like! better than the other ones i have tried out.

KeEpEr!!


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