HELP: Windows XP Pro installed over XP Media

[demon_jr808]

Hey Everyone,

Sorry for the tech support question, but I know ENWORLD is filled with smart techie people, so I hope I don't offend and someone could possibly offer some words of wisdom.

So basically, I tried repairing a Windows XP Media center install by booting from a Windows XP Pro CD and then using the Repair function.

I didn't use Media version, because the only install CD I had on me was Pro. It was probably a bad idea to install Pro over Media.

Here are the steps I followed:

1. Boot the computer using the XP CD. You may need to change the boot order in the system BIOS so the CD boots before the hard drive. Check your system documentation for steps to access the BIOS and change the boot order.
2. When you see the "Welcome To Setup" screen, you will see the options below[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]This portion of the Setup program prepares Microsoft [/FONT]
   [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]Windows XP to run on your computer:[/FONT]
   
   [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]To setup Windows XP now, press ENTER.[/FONT]
   
   [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]To repair a Windows XP installation using Recovery Console, press R.[/FONT]
   
   [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]To quit Setup without installing Windows XP, press F3.[/FONT]
3. Press Enter to start the Windows Setup.
   
   
   do not choose "To repair a Windows XP installation using the Recovery Console, press R", (you Do Not want to load Recovery Console).I repeat, do not choose "To repair a Windows XP installation using the Recovery Console, press R".
4. Accept the License Agreement and Windows will search for existing Windows installations.
5. Select the XP installation you want to repair from the list and press Rto start the repair. If Repair is not one of the options, END setup. After the reboot read Warning#2!
6. Setup will copy the necessary files to the hard drive and reboot. Do not press any key to boot from CD when the message appears. Setup will continue as if it were doing a clean install, but your applications and settings will remain intact.

Now when I try to boot the computer, I get the Windows XP Pro screen, instead of Windows XP Media. Afterwards, I get a blue screen saying that Windows can not boot.

So, I'm at the point where I'm going to buy a new Hard Drive and then just install Pro on it and then use the old hard drive with Windows XP Media as a slave.

My question is, would I still be able to access the files on the Windows XP Media slave drive from the Windows XP Pro drive?

Would it be better to just find a Windows XP Media install CD and try to repair from there?

Any words of wisdom would be appreciated.

 

[Relique du Madde]

Reported

 

[Thanee]

Reported

Uhm... what exactly is wrong with that post?

Bye
Thanee

 

[Merkuri]

Your files are probably fine, and could probably be read if you set up this drive as a secondary drive. It's also possible that doing a repair with your original CD may fix it.

This is all assuming that you are only having problems with your operating system. If your drive is corrupted or something like that then you may not be able to recover all of your files.

Why did you do a repair install in the first place? Were you having problems before you did the repair? Knowing what problems you had before may help us guess whether your files are recoverable or not.

 

[XCorvis]

A repair will replace system files with the versions from the CD, so in this case it replaced some Windows Media Center files with Windows XP Pro files. If you can find a Media Center CD and do the repair from that, it might fix the problem.

I believe the Windows XP installer will let you overwrite an existing installation of Windows without deleting other files. That would let you get the system bootable so you can get your data off. After that you should probably wipe it and start over.

 

[Mercule]

A repair will replace system files with the versions from the CD, so in this case it replaced some Windows Media Center files with Windows XP Pro files. If you can find a Media Center CD and do the repair from that, it might fix the problem.

I believe the Windows XP installer will let you overwrite an existing installation of Windows without deleting other files. That would let you get the system bootable so you can get your data off. After that you should probably wipe it and start over.

This.

AFAIK, there are two base configurations to XP: Home and Pro. Media Center is Home, plus some additional bits. Tablet is Pro, plus some additional bits. There may be other variations, but those are what I'm familiar with.

To my knowledge, there really isn't a version that combines the XP Pro base and Media Center. I don't know if there is a root incompatibility, but I would definitely not make any serious attempt to get Media Center and Pro to play together. IMO, get all the data you can off your machine and do a clean rebuild.

 

[Rackhir]

Now when I try to boot the computer, I get the Windows XP Pro screen, instead of Windows XP Media. Afterwards, I get a blue screen saying that Windows can not boot.

So, I'm at the point where I'm going to buy a new Hard Drive and then just install Pro on it and then use the old hard drive with Windows XP Media as a slave.

My question is, would I still be able to access the files on the Windows XP Media slave drive from the Windows XP Pro drive?

Would it be better to just find a Windows XP Media install CD and try to repair from there?

Any words of wisdom would be appreciated.

Installing XP Pro on to a new HD, is the most certain method of resolving this and keeping your files. You might even want to unhook the old drive until after you have formatted and installed the new HD, just so there isn't any danger of accidentally installing it onto the wrong HD.

This should be fine AS LONG AS, you have NOT used some sort of encryption or password protection on the old HD. Unless you specifically did this (and it doesn't sound like you have) it's not something you have to worry about. If you have not done either, you should have no problems accessing files on the old HD.