RE: total trainwreck :( please help!

Once these things start to happen its best not to waste any more time and do
a complete fresh install. Hopefully you will back your data up beforehand.
Also I use a drive image program and make drive images periodically and also
just before installing new softwware. That way I recover from the drive
image. Anything Microsoft is not reliable.
--
MCE 2005 PC HP Vectra, 400GB HD, 384MB Ram, ATI 9600 Video, Media Player 10,
Xbox 360 connected, Sound Blaster Audigy 2 NX external


"vladdy" wrote:

hi everyone,
well it's been a long story but i'll try and give you the shortest version.
i've been happily running MCE with no problems at all for years... rarely a
major error.

recently i've needed to install a new version of protools for my work.
protools does not support MCE though, so i decided to try creating a new
partition so that i could install XP home and run protools on there
separately.

unfortunately i had many miseable failures in doing so, using partitionmagic
8.0 software.... this was all documented here:
http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/116999.aspx ...i'm sure it's at
least good for a morbid laugh. in a nutshell MANY things went wrong. as you
can see, i've had to do 4 system recoveries.

after the last system recovery, i still had my data intact despite all the
lost time, so i gave up on partitioning and went about getting windows back
to the way it was before the disasters... downloading all the latest windows
updates again, etc.

when i tried to install service pack 2 today, i got an installation error:
"could not write to disk". i searched online for help with this and found a
patch that people say solved this error for them. so i ran this patch.....
service pack 2 appeared to install ok this time but after reboot something
was very, very wrong. windows took a very long time to load and when it
finally did, my taskbar/start button was missing. arrrrrgh. so i attempt to
uninstall service pack 2 a number of different ways. none of them work....
the sp2 uninstall wizard hits the same error that "service pack 2" could not
be found or whatnot, followed by "service pack 2 not uninstalled". perhaps
sp2 was never properly downloaded to start with?

ok... so i hope to do a system restore to before i installed service pack 2.
system restore is not responsive from its main location under "hp recovery".
i find workaround ways to wake up system restore but then i get this error,
"system restore is unable to protect your computer, please reboot and try
again".. no good.

so i try to boot into my recovery partition..... get a blue screen and a
fatal error c000021a, and the computer turns itself off.

seems like my only course of action (again) is to restore from my recovery
disc. and away we go.

i get back into windows once more, with the basic factory settings and my
data intact.... this time though when it loads for the "first time", it
reports an error installing my "new hardware: MEDIA"..... soon after, it
reports an error installing my "new hardware: acpi multiprocessor pc"......
20 minutes later a "hardware found" alert pops up for the multiprocessor, but
i'm not even sure what that means at this point. this error and popup recurs
every time i reboot. it seems odd that there should be any remaning errors
right after a system recovery...?

i try to get into system recovery via the f10 key on startup just to see if
that partition is ok again, but the key is unresponsive and i can't get in.

i am by no means a computer expert..... but the all evidence tells me that
among many other things, partitionmagic did something really bad to my
recovery partition that won't go away. the last i checked in
partitionmagic's overview, my recovery partition was listed as "hidden". i
don't honestly know if that is the way it is supposed to be or not?

right now i am tempted to just back up my data on an external drive and -
rather than do a full, destructive system restore - just format and install
fresh from this brand new xp home edition i had purchased. at least then i
will be able to run the protools that was the whole point to begin with!

but at this stage i'm not sure if xp home would even install correctly --
will the new windows also wipe the existing, possibly-bad recovery partition
and create its own?
are there ways to error check all of windows + my recovery partition to
truly troubleshoot? and finally, would xp home have any trouble running on an
hp media center computer? i've never installed a new OS before so it's all
alien to me.

please help with any support or ideas you might have. i'm getting very
frustrated and desperate :(

many thanks in advance
.

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