Re: XP hangs/freezes before my accounts and the MS sound "appear"

From: TJ (tj_at_notreal.com)
Date: 07/11/04 

Date: Sun, 11 Jul 2004 13:50:05 GMT

"Alyce" <Alyce@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:92AC5A5B-048F-4801-ACB7-93E152AE276D@microsoft.com...
> Last night I shut down my Presario 2550 (Windows XP Pro SP1) normally,
with no problems, and today, when I turned it on, everything froze up at the
blue screen where the accounts and MS sound usually appear. I have tried
starting it up in safe mode, using the "last known good configuration", and
pretty much everything else that's available on the screen you get when you
hit F8 but startup freezes in the same place very time.
> I don't think I can do an In Place Upgrade b/c when I sent the laptop to
HP a few months ago (for a hard drive problem - they replaced it) they
installed XP Pro but I bought the machine with XP Home. They didn't send me
CDs for XP Pro so I only have the one that came with the laptop and hence,
XP Home.
> I also tried booting from Norton Ghost CD and the original XP Home CD but
it seems as though using those options I'll lose all of my data.
> Is there any way to save my data? I really don't want to lose my
photos.....
> Thanks to anyone who can help.

You could try this article:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN];316941

and follow the instructions to "Install Windows XP in a new folder". This
is called a parallel installation. Basically you would have two Windows
folders (call the new one WinXP or something). The hope is that you could
then boot into the new parallel WinXP and save your data. I don't know for
a fact that you could have different Pro and Home installs in parallel but I
don't see why not either.

However, before I were to do the above, I would get something like Spinrite
(www.grc.com), run it at Level 2, 3, or 4, and see if it can find and repair
any problems with the drive. I wouldn't be surprised if the goons at HP
didn't actually replace your old drive, they probably just ran some disk
software to mark the bad sectors then reformatted and installed XP Pro and
shipped it back to you. The problem is that once there's bad sectors, the
drive is already on it's way down hill and if they left the same drive in,
it could be screwed up again. Spinrite may help with this.

A third option, go out and buy a new hard drive, and connect it as the
primary drive in your machine. Move the old drive to secondary. Do a clean
XP Home install on the new drive. Boot into the new Windows, and recover
your data off the old drive.

Finally, if you have a floppy drive, you could use another computer to
create a Bootable DOS floppy and boot into DOS on your machine, then recover
your data that way. This won't work if your Hard Drive is formatted as NTFS
because I don't think DOS can read NTFS.

Please proceed at your own risk, but I just wanted to throw some options
your way. Maybe discuss these with someone you trust who knows a lot about
computers. I know how frustrating these types of problems are!!

Good luck

Relevant Pages

  • Re: XP Upgrade install problem
    ... To start the Windows XP installation boot the computer *with* the XP CD-ROM, stick the cd in the drive and restart the computer. ... As you probably already know, Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista are pure 32-bit operating systems, there is no 16-bit DOS in those operating systems, any 16-bit applications running on these pure 32-bit operating systems must be run inside a 16-bit Virtual Machine. ... after the screwed up Install. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.setup_deployment)
  • Re: XP Upgrade install problem
    ... I have not been able to boot to Windows since the first reboot ... The CD won't run in DOS. ... I ran the Winnt file from DOS and the install went ok. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.setup_deployment)
  • Re: Reinstall win2K HD is ONLY bootable device???
    ... That being the case are there any options in the bios to boot from external? ... If I install the recovery console, ... to remove the drive, installed dos, booted dos, installed win98 ... Format /s the primary partition to install Windows 98 DOS. ...
    (microsoft.public.win2000.setup)
  • OT Re: XP-pro & DOS
    ... Home or Pro have the same capabilities ... DOS emulators like DOSBox (as opposed to the ... The Command Prompt, often ... install it yourself on the XP Pro laptop. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics)
  • Re: Loging on to windows.
    ... click the button to "check all boot paths". ... Windows help - www.rickrogers.org ... > upgrade xp home I just did a full install of Pro. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support)