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Windows XP reinstall

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13 replies

by computab

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I tried to reinstall Windows XP on a 3GHz system, 512MB, 76GB hard drive without formatting as the drive contains a lot of valuable data. The reinstall process is stuck and now I need to cancel the reinstall process, backup, format, and reinstall windows. I can get into the recovery console, but then what do I do to cancle the reinstall. I cannot get into safemode, as I get a message that Windows cannot reinstall in safemode, and then it restarts. Help!

13 replies

by sgt_shultz

i am not completely clear on your situation from your post as you say you don't want to format and then you do.
how about this idea?
can you get hands on another hard disk. remove 76gb drive and put in new drive. install xp on it. then install second hard drive as slave and see if you can read it and backup your data. then format it. remove first drive, put in 76GB drive and reinstall XP. or take your drive over to buddy's house and put in as second drive there to read and backup data, and format to prepare for installation
does that help?

by computab

I have done that. I put the disk as slave in another NTFS system. The trouble is the data is encrypted, and I cant backup all the data. That is why I need to cancel the reinstall process. There is no recovery disk.

by mikex

Welcome in the MS world ...=> use either NTFS DOS pro 5.0 or winternals disk commander in order to copy safely your valuable data=>fdisk HDD with a special fdisk or something similar wich support NTFS partitions=>Format=> Make a fresh MS (Macro Suffering) XP install

by computab

I have done that, but as the data is encrypted, I cant backup all data, so I need to cancel the reinstall process.

by highlore

The easiest way to make sire you have ALL the files you want, is to make a ghostimage of it with Symantec ghost (I would recommend ghosting over the network).

When you forgot a file it is still in the image you created.

by highlore

I forgot to mention that it is possible to extract files out of the image by using the ghost explorer.

by computab

Yes, that would be ideal, but the corrupted disk is 80GB, and I dont have a larger disk, needed for Ghost to work. How do I cancel the reinstall process?

by willcomp

Assuming that drive has NTFS partitions.

Simplest solution is to connect the hard disk to another PC running XP or 2K. Then you can either copy data files to hard disk on that PC or burn them to CD. Burning is preferable since you obviously don't have a backup and CDs are portable.

by willcomp

After verifying data backup ii good, you can repartition and format drive while it is connected to second PC. Then remove, reinstall in original PC, and install XP clean.

by willcomp

Would have been nice to know about encrypted files and other efforts you tried on front end.

Saw same problem on a Win2K system where user attempted repair install. I looked hard for a solution but could not find one. Recovery console was no help nor was boot.ini or any of the editable startup files.

Wound up reinstalling Win2K.

Hope someone has figured this out and lets you know. I would also be interested in case I have to deal with it again.

by computab

Ok, but I asked for help with cancelling the reinstall process, for which maybe there is no solution.

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