Resolved Repair and transfer XP installation

Purchased new from Tiger with components for a full budget system Dec 2004, and now located in one of some 20 boxes of cd/dvd originals. I never use originals for anything, but always make and use copies. Since I'm going to do a full install the slipstreamed SP3 disk is only a very minor convenience, reducing the list of probably about 40 things I'll need to 39.

Thanks

 

I've just been reading back through this thread and noticed this in post 8:

I don't quite understand what is happening here as a Repair installation should not need any extra files, this might just confirm that your copied XP disc is the cause of this whole problem. I would suspect you have a mismatch of XP versions between the disc and what is installed or your hard drive.

Did your PC come preinstalled with Windows XP?

Does it have OEM on the Product Key sticker?

And, if you did not buy the PC with XP preinstalled did you install it from the copied disc you are now using or from another source.

 

Our last two posts crossed over so you have already answered some of my questions.

When you copied the original XP disc did you follow instructions like the ones in this link. If "no" that could further explain the difficulties you are having. The original disc is pressed, not burned so (as far as I know) you cannot make a perfect copy of it just by copying the image from one disc to another. Read this guide and you will see what has to be done to make a bootable copy that will work.

http://www.ehow.com/how_5612837_copy-windows-xp-installation-disk.html

Meanwhile, to get your system up and running I would suggest you find your original disc to do the clean install, it could save any more headaches. You may even find that with the original disc that a Repair install will be successfull.

 

Well, some good is going to come of this; I;m about 23% through organizing my CDs. But w/o finding the XP original. The more I think about it, the more certain I am it contained SP2. I was not aware of the difference between burned and pressed CDs. However - I find it hard to believe that my problems could be caused by a bad or inferior disk. I have used the disk at issue for literally dozens of reinstalls with never a glitch [that I did not later discover to be due to operator error].

Thanks, though

 

To me it confirms that I deleted or uninstalled something I should not have. Or made a mistake like the one where I tried to update Nvidia drivers from the Windows Update site. (Hey, it said I needed them and it had them).

Update a few minutes later: No, wait. The reply above misses your point. You may be right.

 

A lot of previous use of the disk does confirm it was OK so my suggestion it was a bad copy is most certainly wrong, just scratching my head trying to find a good reason for the problems.

The only other idea is that maybe the disc is getting a bit scratched after a lot of use.

Hopefully you will find the original (Or try to borrow one) and then you can use it to try the repair install again and see if it improves anything.

 

Hardware Problem, I Think

Thanks markmadras and PeteC for all your help.

The latest is, while looking for my XP disk I came across a SeaTools CD and thought I would test the Seagate drive I was now trying to use, and perhaps use Seatools to repartition and format the drive, since I didn't really trust the Easeus program I had been using.

So I ran the program on the CD and created a bootable floppy and booted from it (actually a pair of floppies). But at or near the end of the initialization it said "Divide Overflow; Abnormal Termination; [goodbye] ". And this happened twice.

But the program on the floppies worked fine on another computer, an old one with:

MB Chaintech VNF3-250 nvidia3.3
CPU AMD Sempron 2600+, socket 754

instead of my main and somewhat better one with:

MB: Intel DG965WH LGA775
CPU: Intel Core2 Duo E6320

So I'm going to set aside the reinstall problem until I've got everything backed up and the hardware troubleshot.

Thanks again. I'll probably have a dumb question or three later.

 

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads

Try this link above to download Seatools ISO for CD. I'd guess your version is a few years old, the new one will be more up to date and far better on a CD.

 

PeteC:

Sorry I wasn't clearer. There were 2 drives. First I was using the 80g Hitachi that was attached for a long time. Then I switched to a newer 250g Seagate that I had lying around.

 

markmadras:

Thanks for the link!

 

Well, they definitely both have SP3, and the slipstreamed disk is good, because I've used it to do a clean install on another machine ( "Ally "). Details below.

I'll probably try a clean install on my main computer after I do a few other things, but while I was putting my system details into my profile at wbbs this morning it occurred to me that the power supply, 425w, may not be enough for the video card, the 4 hard drives and the rest. So next time I try I'll remove the video card and unplug the power (as well as the data) connections to the 3 drives other than the install target.

But I won't continue working on this until probably a week or so.

Thanks for all your help.

G:\SYS\ALLY.TXT

Case Powmax V90-sel Rtl W/ 400w XION/XON-400X
MB AOPEN AK86-L R1.18 Aug 24, 2005 - VIA K8T800
BIOS Phoenix - AwardBios v6.00 PG
CPU AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Socket 754 ADA 3000AEP4AX
Mem 1024m

Video Asus A9250/TD Radeon 9250 AGP 8X 128mb
Modem DSI D-F-V V.90 DI3635
HDD0 S4 Seagate 250g SATA C:
HDD1 S5 Seagate 250g SATA D:, E:, F:
OPDR Asus CD-S520B
Liteon SHW160P8S05 DVD+/-RW
Acer AL1717 Fb 17" LCD Monitor

 

You did not complete the instructions, My System has not appeared in your profile box next to your posts.

Follow this:

You could well be right about your power supply, will be able to advise further once your system details are available to view.

 

OK.

And now there is another problem: I downloaded Microsoft Security Essentials from

http://download.microsoft.com/downl...-AF60-E44F6DC28BD8/en-us/amd64/mseinstall.exe

to my main system ( "Chief "), and transferred it via wireless network to the target computer ( "Ally "), whose details were in my last post. But when I click on it (at Ally) I get "C:\xfercd1\mseinstall.exe is not a valid win32 application ". This procedure seemed to work fine with IE8 and Firefox.

I hope I'm not going to have to connect Ally to the net before it has protection, in order to download the file directly.

 

Umm, maybe something got corrupted on its journey, try transferring it on CD. Maybe a silly question but you did make sure you downloaded the correct version for PC Ally?

 

No, not corrupted. I copied it back and compared it with the original (DOS command "FC ") and they matched.

But - Yes - wrong version. I saw the amd64 and figured that was right since the target machine has an AMD Athlon 64 (maybe the amd64 version is for amd processors running 64 bit windows), but the x86 version seems to work. It wouldn't let me complete the install without going online to validate. Fearing to do that I downloaded & installed a trial version of Avast.

Had I known I was going to have to go online to activate that I would have gone ahead with Security Essentials, but anyway, I will now have Avast for 30 days or so while I decide what to do with the system. I'm a little suspicious of MSE, since it has never once warned me of malware, as Avast free used to do fairly often.

I doubt that Microsoft will let me activate again with this key, especially since this would be a step down, whereas the first time I reactivated with a different machine it was a step up. If I can't reactivate, I guess I'll have to choose between W98 and Linux. At some point I'll get Windows 7 or 8, but certainly not for this machine.

Thanks.

 

As long as your version of XP is genuine you should have no problem activating it as long as you do not have it installed on another machine, with no activation it will expire and crash after 30 days.

I can assure you that MSE is a much better AV than Avast free. It found infections on my PC that both Avast and Malwarebytes couldn't.

 

Update; Success

The last time I posted I was giving up on the repair installation. To summarize, I wanted to repair my XP installation and move it to a larger drive, retaining the original drive for a while as a backup. But I seemed to be encountering problems at every turn. So I was going to start fresh with a clean install.

But that didn't go any better, so I stopped to think, and hit on what was apparently the problem: I had been trying to repair or install on FAT32 partitions larger than 32g.

I knew (vaguely) about the size limits for fat32, but without giving it much thought I figured that the Windows setup program would tell me if I was trying to do something it couldn't do. Anyway, I have done several installs and repairs using partitions under 32g with no (so far apparent) problems not due to operator error (errors explain the "several "). I haven't determined whether all the problems I was having have been fixed by the repair, but I am optimistic.

The Windows BBS, and particularly PeteC and markmadras, have given invaluable support at several critical points; I'm sure I would have given up early on without it. So thank you again.

There is one minor point you might want to reconsider if the issue arises again: when the new disk seemed OK except that it would not boot, you advised using fixmbr in the recovery console. My experience is that that doesn't work, but that setting the partition active in Windows Disk Management does.

So now I have accomplished most of what I originally wanted, the only remaining issue being partition size. What I now have is:

J: S8-BOOT FAT32 28.39 GB ACTIVE PRIMARY
* Unallocated 50.63 GB
E: S8-DATA FAT32 153.87 GB PRIMARY

I assume the drive letters don't matter, and while I would feel better if the status of the 28g partition was "system" rather than "active ", it seems to work as is.

What I am going to try now is to expand the 28g partition into the unallocated space so I just have a 79g boot partition and a 154g data part. I'll let you know how that works out.

Thank you again.

Robert Leeper

 

Well done, you managed to fix the problem yourself, it is so much easier to deal with a problem PC when it is infront of you. Thanks for that point about setting the partition to Active, I did know that had to be done but on this occassion, oops sorry, did not think of it, that may help me remember next time. Glad you got there in the end, expanding the partition should be fairly straight forward.

 

Yes, and now several important things that weren't working (add/remove Windows components, Windows image access) are. It's great to get this done, and as I said, I don't think I could have done it without wbbs.

Now I've ******* up Help by removing MSN Explorer, but I'm sure I'll work it out.

Thanks