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Help me fix my broken XP install plz...

cdnegercdneger Registered User regular
edited February 2007 in Games and Technology
The situation is this. I have a pc with Windows XP Home edition. I recently found out I had the 'automatic updates' option set to 'off' so I was due many many updates. I decided to update. Everything went well, I received update after update, and then at one point I discovered that one of my Bittorrent programs couldn't download anything anymore. This was the updates' fault I decided, and I did a system restore to right before the first update. I think. Lo and behold, the damn system doesn't want to boot anymore. It gets this screen

winxp-scr-02.png

and stays there, with the moving bar thing still moving. For hours (I have tried this). Any other boot attempts like safe mode don't work either. The only thing that gets me into Windows proper is a setup mode called in Dutch 'Foutopsporing' which loosely translates to 'finding the error'. I get into my desktop and it starts injecting all these icons into the systray and then hangs.

What can I do? I have the following to work with: the borked pc, this other working pc, and external HDD and a legit Windows XP Home edition.

Please help me, I don't know what to do.

EDIT: I already removed the HDD from the broken pc and copied all the important documents and stuff to this other pc, so if I lose my documents and settings folders that is no problem. I really do not wish to do a full reformat however.

Every+Zig.png
cdneger on

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    XieflowXieflow Registered User regular
    edited February 2007
    This probably won't help, but my computer does something similar. If I reboot it, it hangs on that loading screen pretty much forever, not doing anything (the blue thing animates, but that's it)... however, if I unplug everything USB when it's off, and then boot it up, it works (both my keyboard and mouse are USB, and I think when I was using a PS/2 mouse it wouldn't boot up if it was plugged in). And if it matters, I have XP Pro and not XP Home.

    Xieflow on
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    cdnegercdneger Registered User regular
    edited February 2007
    There are no USB devices hooked up when I boot the broken pc.. So that's not it.

    I found this http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm and also this http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic8356.html but that doesn't work for me either because while I can choose the option 'repair an existing windows install' it does not repair anything, it just asks me for an admin password and gives me a dos prompt and that's it.

    cdneger on
    Every+Zig.png
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    FatsFats Corvallis, ORRegistered User regular
    edited February 2007
    cdneger wrote:
    it just asks me for an admin password and gives me a dos prompt and that's it.

    You sure you chose the right option? I know there's a "repair windows using the repair console" choice somewhere in there that dumps you to a DOS prompt.

    Regardless, I've never had much luck trying to salvage an install in this state. You've already backed up your documents, so there's no reason not to format and start clean.

    Fats on
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    Kewop DecamKewop Decam Registered User regular
    edited February 2007
    reformating will be quicker and cause less headaches if you ask me

    Kewop Decam on
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    ZetxZetx 🐧 Registered User regular
    edited February 2007
    Kewop Decam wrote:
    reformating will be quicker and cause less headaches if you ask me

    Agreed. Grab a LiveCD and get your data off the drive if necessary, reformat, and you're good to go.

    Zetx on
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    KouKou Registered User regular
    edited February 2007
    Might as well ask about my problem as well. After having a few problems getting my machine into a LAN party we had at my place my XP decided to convert it's login system to ye olde USER: PASS: way. Which I really don't mind since I'm able to lock the computer, but you can only have one user logged on at once.

    Since my computer also happens to be a multiple user computer, how do I flip the login system back to whatever the name for the default windows XP login system is?

    Kou on
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    ecchiecchi Registered User regular
    edited February 2007
    Kou wrote:
    Since my computer also happens to be a multiple user computer, how do I flip the login system back to whatever the name for the default windows XP login system is?
    Enable Fast User Switching. It's either in the Users control panel or accessible through TweakUI.

    ecchi on
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    ToastToast Registered User regular
    edited February 2007
    Kou wrote:
    Might as well ask about my problem as well. After having a few problems getting my machine into a LAN party we had at my place my XP decided to convert it's login system to ye olde USER: PASS: way. Which I really don't mind since I'm able to lock the computer, but you can only have one user logged on at once.

    Since my computer also happens to be a multiple user computer, how do I flip the login system back to whatever the name for the default windows XP login system is?

    How do you do this, btw?

    Toast on
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    cdnegercdneger Registered User regular
    edited February 2007
    Ah damn I was so hoping to avoid a reformat.

    :?

    cdneger on
    Every+Zig.png
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    nexuscrawlernexuscrawler Registered User regular
    edited February 2007
    First things first. Hold how F8 when the computeris starting up and ry to hit "last KNown Good Configuration"

    nexuscrawler on
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