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WinXP Home setup looping

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by admin 1 view

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A customer's computer with Windows XP Home is continually looping in setup. The computer already had winXP Home installed and they installed some third party software (games) that gave the user a promt to reinstall windows? The user in ignorance did and now when the computer is turned on it automatically goes into setup. even if you boot from the CD it doesn't prompt for recovery console or setup it just goes straight into setup. setup gets to "installing devices" and some GeneLink device (NIC card I assumed) and then restarts the computer and does the same thing over and over again. I took out the NIC and modem and it still does the same thing.

What can I do to get setup to stop automatically beginning?!?

5 replies

by qballrail

For some reason, Windows thinks it is in the middle of the setup process.

Best thing to do is run setup from the CD. Repartition the drive when prompted and format with NTFS and let Windows complete the setup.

Probably not what you really wanted to hear but perhaps the best solution in this case.

Good Luck!

by admin

Thanks, jdhNV, but I can't run setup from the WinXP Home CD. It jumps directly into the same setup cycle. What I could do is use a win98 boot cd to repartition (fdisk) the drive and then reinstall WinXP Home from scratch. That is why I'mposting the question here. Hopefully, someone can comeup with some other way...

Do I need to up the points inorder to get more responses?!?

by techkid

If you are booting from the cd it WILL NOT start in the middle of setup. This means that since your machine is doing that, it's actually booting from the hard drive and the reinstall didn't finish properly. If you're absolutely sure that it won't boot from the cd any longer, you don't need to fdisk the HD. However, I would format the drive with your Win98 disk and start the install from scratch. Should it still not boot from the cd, double check the BIOS settings and make sure it's set to boot from cd first. If all looks well in the BIOS and it still doesn't boot from cd, then you may try downloading the boot floppoies from Microsofts website and install XP using the boot floppies

by admin

BIOS is set to boot from cd then hd. It even prompts: "press any key to boot from cd". But when you do that it jumps right back into the middle of setup.

I tried putting an XP pro disk in just to see what that might do, and it still does the same thing only now as soon as installation starts it flashes some error message that says something like "insufficient...api or ap1..." Its too quick to read.

Does anyone have any idea how to restart the xp home installation without formating the drive?

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