XP reinstall question

Bouncing_Soul

I get paranoid every time I have to do something like this, so I'm going to ask:

I can't boot to my normal c: drive anymore, gives me an error about not being able to find hal.dll. Now, if I reinstall XP Pro back onto that drive, I shouldn't lose any data, correct?

MrIamMe

As long as you dont format the drive, no.

Its possible to skip that stage, and I do it.

What will happen however is all stuff on your old profile will be renamed and encrypted under Documents and Settings.

You will need to boot into Administrator, take possession of the files and move them into your new profile.

Also, your registry will be fucked, and there will be nothing in your start menu pointing to the locations of your files. You may want to back this up externally and merge it into your new one.

embrik

Additionally, if there's errors about files missing, you'd do well to perform a chkdsk /r at the recovery console to see if there are any disk issues needing fixing. I've seen errors like these when drives are on their way out.

Bouncing_Soul

Actually it was something that I screwed up, I changed the partition number in the boot.ini thinking it would boot from that drive.

As it is now I don't remember how I fucked it up but I had like 3 different XP installs to choose from at boot time, so this was a long time coming anyway.

I already reinstalled XP on a different drive which is what I'm using now, but I want it to be on my SATA drive, which is both faster and larger than this.

MrIamMe

You might be better off with a OS disk and a files disk

Thats how I do it, and it allows for speedy recovery of OS issues.

Bouncing_Soul

Could you elaborate on that one? I'm not so sure what you mean.

KMFurDM

I am sure he means have more than one partition or more than one hard drive...if possible. That way blowing out Windows and putting on a fresh from format install is less of a problem. It is better in the long run. Installing over Windows without a format can end in tears.

redimpulse

Wait, Don't reinstall just yet!

Read and print (or make a copy somehow) of THIS

Pull out your XP disc and boot in. Then go to the recovery console instead of installing. Follow the steps covered in the link above and you should be able to replace HAL.DLL without a full reinstall.

Bouncing_Soul

redimpulse wrote: »

Wait, Don't reinstall just yet!

Read and print (or make a copy somehow) of THIS

Pull out your XP disc and boot in. Then go to the recovery console instead of installing. Follow the steps covered in the link above and you should be able to replace HAL.DLL without a full reinstall.

Well fuck, that would have helped if I wasn't so impatient

I do have a few other drives, I copied all the stuff that I didn't want to lose just in case to another drive, and renamed the old windows and app data folders so it created new ones.

I needed a new install anyway, my boot.ini was all f'ed up.

Thanks for the help everyone, now I just have to reinstall all my programs and settings (what a pain in the ass).