Need Serious Computer Help

Alright, so I read these tips on microsoft for deleting a partition containing windows xp which mentioned going into your .ini file and removing the line containing the partition. When I did that, I rebooted my pc to see if it worked and it said that there was a fatal error. I took the factory restore disk and popped it in to see if it would work and it wouldn't so I tried a fresh reinstall into a raw partition and several of the essential program files come up as unable to install and give me the option to skip, retry or abort the download. If I skip all of the files, when I come to the end, it just cycles from the Setup is initializing screen back to the Windows XP Home Edition main page and then back to the Setup is initializing screen. Any help?

I hope you didn't have any files that you required in your C: drive such as documents and stuff, as these are located in your Documents and Settings folder and a few others.

Set your CD Drive up as the main boot device. Place your XP disk into the drive and boot your machine.

You set the CD Drive as bootbale in the BIOS. Depending on how your BIOS works will depend on how you configure it.

When the CD boots up, it will start the XP Setup Program and prompt you for various things regarding install.

Anyway, follow the onscreen prompts to Repair XP over the current partition you have it installed on, if you wish to try and recover any files you may have located on the C: drive.

If you want a complete clean reinstall of XP on the C: drive, then choose the Reinstall option to delete the C: partition and then recreate the partition with a full NTFS format and then follow the install instructions.

Hope this helps.

just curious, if you weren't going to reinstall windows initially, why in the world would you attempt to delete that partition? It would have been easier to simply pop in the windows xp cd and reboot from cd, then to simply format that partition and reinstall.

Have you ever tried getting any helpful advice from the MS website?

It can be very confusing and misleading even for Tech Savvy people. ROFL

The thing is I had 2 XP partitions set up on my Hard Drive which was taking up WAY more memory than I wanted and the second partition *the unwanted one* was the one that booted by default if I didn't catch it and select the one that I did want.


Secondly, I will try this when I get home but do you think it will work if the disk isn't a full XP installation but just a restore disk. I had this problem once before with a restore disk not working without an instance of Windows on the PC.

A restore disk is just that, a restore of previous files.

Where did you get your XP originally? And do you not own an upgrade or full copy of XP?

If not, then any problems you have with regards to your PC are going to be very hard to sort out without a full copy.
Plus, if your PC ever asks for the disk to install any files, what do you do?

XP came pre-installed on the system with only the restore disk. Yeah! It's terrible but it was a free pc I got for taking a class with this school and I still haven't finished the classes so I NEED the computer.


Do you think the system restore points are still in tact and is there any way to access them to revert to the former state of the computer.

Try the same procedure I mentioned above with the restore disk and see if it boots the pc up into XP setup. If so, then use the Restore options. It may well be a copy of XP you have for reinstall.

Remember to set the CD to bootdisk before trying.

Are you able to boot the other copy of XP located on the PC?

I managed to fix it. I had to delete the existing partition, create a new one, boot on to it and then when the files popped up and said they weren't accessible, I just kept hitting enter until it most of them loaded except for autocheck.exe and drivers.cab or something but it works fine and all of that.

Sorry m8 but what you have done is a duff install of XP, and it will come crashing down on you like S*** quite quickly, you need all the files to enable you to have a stable OS...

With you having only restore disks you can only do a full restore i'e back to factory settings, you cannot do a repair install without a full version of XP, the only way to save any data is if the pc manufacturers have included some sort of option in the restore disks. You had better give them a call

Rather late to this, but for future reference if you're dual booting.

If you look in Control Panel/System/Advanced, there's an option to adjust the boot order. Select the default operating system from the list and that'll be the one that starts first.

If you're interested, this is all held in the Boot.ini file which you can access via the Edit button, or from the root of the c: drive.

You could probably have gotten away with a repair.