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Help saving my work XP SP2 setup !!

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9 replies

by monographix

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Starting my pc on Monday morning loaded only till the point after the windows logo on black background with the blue progress bar, reached to load a cursor against a black background and stalled there ....

After some reboot/poower off attemts nothing changed.

Safe mode worked ok. i tried two different restore points with no effect.

Then i tried to unload startup by ms config. Nothing changed again.

Then i tried "sfc /scannow" from safe mode, it wouldn't execute it.

Then i proceeded to repair installation from the windows XP2 setup cd. After the first restart it got frozen again in the middle of the process, somewhere in the "installing windows" screen...

after that when i reboot it, it shows "restarting setup ......" even sometimes loads the windows logo with the blue progress bar but then frozes again on a black screen with a cursor

Trying safe mode things are different : reaches the point with the "safe mode" indication on the four corners and a cursor appears but freezes there ....

Trying the repair again , now the setup cd cant find the windows installation anymore .......

ANy hellp highly appreciated ...

If at least could make the setup cd to find / recognise the windows installation again ....

9 replies

by rob miners

You can use the Hard Drive Makers Testing Utility to Test the Drive which can be downloaded from below.
Hitachi / IBM
Western Digital
Fujitsu
Seagate
Samsung

You could add the Drive as a Slave to your PC or a USB enclosure and then copy off the Data. Another alternative is to use a Linux CD to burn it or to copy it elsewhere.

You will have to determine the Hard Drives physical size and data connectors before purchasing a USB Enclosure. If it is from a Notebook then it will be 2.5" and if it's from a Desktop it would normally be 3.5".
The Data connectors can be either IDE 40 pin or Sata. IDE is a wide/flat ribbon cable with either 40 or 80 wires where Sata is a thin plastic cable with thin connectors.

by monographix

What the XP installation CD needs to recognize a windows installation, what does it looking for to determine that it has found a previous windows installation?

finds the partitions but treats the windows installation just as plain data, therefor not giving me a windows repair option

by rob miners

you hard drive is failing. Follow the steps that I provided before.

by monographix

Thanks Jacky.

I run a bootable cd utility that thoroughly checks hard drive consistency / health / sectors and came out clean. I also installed on another partition in the same drive a new XP installation which works ok. All other data from the drive is retrievable and uncorrupted, only the initial windows installation will froze on loading (looks like maybe messed up registry or drivers to me)

What you suggest is backing up the corrupted installation and the data. which ofcourse is wise. Any clues maybe on things i should try that could probably fix and revive the installation to its original working state?

by rob miners

but it has definately been marked. Can't you see it?

by rob miners

to Backup your Data, wipe the drive and reinstall a fresh OS.

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