Foolish mistake with Windows XP

This morning, I had a healthy install of Windows XP running fine and dandy, until an acquaintance of mine came to my office armed with a windows 98 CD and a floppy, saying he needed a win 98 boot disk.

I work in the Information Systems office, and I was obligated to help him out. My first mistake was not going to a windows 98 PC and simply making a startup disk from there. My second mistake was using the Windows 98 install CD to try and make a startup floppy. I repeat, I was foolish. I used the SECOND partition on my primary master HD for a "temporary" windows 98 installation location, so that windows 98 setup would prompt me to make a startup disk. Since this was another partition, I thought it would be fine to use. Again, foolish.

This second partition turned out not to have enough space, so I quit out of the Windows 98 startup program. I assumed that there were no changes made, but I was wrong.

Next, when I tried to boot up XP on my first, normal boot partition, it would "hang" after loading numerous services (I saw this by booting up in Safe Mode, which had no effect on changing the problem). I used the Windows XP CD-ROM to do a repair install, which it completed admirably. However, upon rebooting from the repair installation, same problem (loading numerous services) except it RESTARTS as opposed to "hanging. "

The last service it loaded in both instances was agp440 -- I can successfully login using the repair console, and I did so to use fixboot and fixmbr, as well as chkdsk /p and chkdsk /r -- no change so far. All my data is intact on the drive, but windows will not boot.

What change hath the Windows 98 CD possibly wrought, and what can be done to undo it?

Thank you for reading this, it was posted in desperation -- I simply can't afford to lose my system registry, and all my settings again.

 

Hi Unnamed Person...

Welcome to the board...

I think you mentioned that you can boot in with "Safe Mode "...

First thought...try running System File Checker...
- Start => Run => type sfc /scannow (note the space right after sfc). You will need to have your XP CD handy.

 

Thanks for your response. Allow me to clarify:

I can CHOOSE safe mode, when I'm at the boot menu. But the result is the exact same as if I didn't -- It simply restarts without loading the GUI, meaning I cannot really get into safe mode.

 

Bummer...

Ok...found this => Problems When Windows XP Tries to Load the Agp440.sys Service

 

If Kent's reference doesn't do it, post back, then its XP's Master Boot Record that got damaged.

Regards - Charles

 

Ah, sadly, have already disabled it in the recovery console -- the last driver it tries to load before the automatic restart is the .sys that showed up before agp440.sys -- I think this is just a red herring. The problem seems to be Windows making the leap from the command line to the GUI, which would logically mean some sort of graphical configuration error, but disabling agp440.sys has not solved it.

 

You could also try taking the HDD out and slave it to another WinXP box to see if you can access the files that you require.

 

Thankfully, I have another hard drive (with windows 98) hooked up right now, and I found this file online:
http://www.aade.com/XPhint/XPrecovery.htm#regcopy2
This MAY work, going to follow its instructions.

I thank you for your help, it is much appreciated. I'll let you know what happens.

 

Or repair the installation with the XP CD:

Skip the first repair option (no "R" press) and just continued with your installation. After you accept the license by pressing F8, setup searches for existing installations of Windows. By following the onscreen instructions and pressing "R" at this point, your current installation will be repaired.

Regards - Charles

EDIT:Re-read your post, see that you already tried that.

 

Was the XP installation done on a fat32 partition or a NTFS partition?

If it was NTFS I don't see how the 98 install could harm anything on the primary partition.

 

Doesn't matter in this case. What matters here is the boot sector and that happens to be where XP is.

The boot sector is always on C, regardless of the file system. It got damaged. If the 9X install would have completed, the XP repair should have fixed it. That's how 9X OSes can be added behind that of NT OSes. Since the 9X didn't complete, the state of the MBR is unpredictable.

Hope we get a post back.

Regards - Charles

 

Thanks for that clairifaction charlesvar.