need help reinstalling xp

I did a dumb thing and now I need help! I have a box that came preloaded with an oem version of xp on it. I was having an unrelated problem and was going to attempt to do a repair install on it. In my stupidity, I grabbed a regular upgrade version of windows that I have for another puter and tried to load it up. Now, a few seconds after the splash screen comes up, it hangs. Only way out is to power down.

Does anyone have any suggestions to fix this without using the restore CD's that came with the computer. My objection to that is, of course, that it will format the drive and I do not have a back up.

I would appreciate any suggestions. Thanks!

 

have you tried safe mode? Another possibility is to remove the hard drive make it a slave and install temporarily on another machine. Now you can copy the files you wish to back up easily.

 

Thanks for the welcome & the suggestion

I did check the restore CD's and unfortunatly it has no options, just to reformat and lose everything.

 

Chuck asked

Did you?

 

Thanks Chuck W

Yes, I did try safe mode, with no luck. Very good suggestion to temp install hd as slave in another machine. I doubt that anyone has any better suggestion, so that is probably what I will do. Thanks again for the great idea! CEEBEE

 

Thanks for reply Surferdude2

Yes I did try safe mode! Any other suggestions? CEEBEE

 

You could use Ghost to image the drive to cd's and then do a clean install and pull your personal data from the ghost image.