do I buy a full version now?

  • Thread starter Thread starter DON
  • Start date Start date
D

DON

young son put W98 CD into XP home. hit yes button, it
tried to install in over XP. He thought it was one of his
games. It seemed to try to reformat everything from what
he said, the way I got the info out of him. anyway, XP is
gone. Now what. Pc just wants a boot cd installed. none
around anymore, nor the xp discs. So do I buy a complete
XP home version, for a full new install or what?
 
DON said:
young son put W98 CD into XP home. hit yes button, it
tried to install in over XP. He thought it was one of his
games. It seemed to try to reformat everything from what
he said, the way I got the info out of him. anyway, XP is
gone. Now what. Pc just wants a boot cd installed. none
around anymore, nor the xp discs. So do I buy a complete
XP home version, for a full new install or what?
Click to expand...

Don,

Why dont´t you have the XP disc? Did you buy your PC with an OEM license
with XP pre-installed on the hard drive? Then you should be able to restore
WinXP from a hidden partition on the HDD. Check your manual.
If not, you could buy a Windows XP update. It´s a full version, but during
install it will only ask you to insert an original Win98 disc briefly to see
if you are rightfully using an update verion of XP.

Best regards,

Ben
 
Hi, Don.

We don't really know how much damage he did. MAYBE all you need to do is to
boot from the WinXP CD-ROM and use the Recovery Console to run FixBoot and
FixMBR. When Win98 installs, it overwrites the WinNT-style boot sector on
the system partition (almost always Drive C:) with the Win9x/ME-style boot
sector. The Win98 boot sector looks for io.sys and msdos.sys to boot Win98.
The WinNT-style boot sector looks for C:\ntldr, which uses C:\boot.ini and
C:\ntdetect.com to find and load WinXP. All of these files together total
much less than one megabyte, so if nothing else got wiped out, simply
letting the Recovery Console put these back in place should get your WinXP
up and running again.

Of course, if it really did reformat the drive - or even start to reformat
it - you may have to reinstall WinXP from scratch. :>(
Pc just wants a boot cd installed. none
around anymore, nor the xp discs.
Click to expand...

Uh, oh! What kind of computer is this? No WinXP CD-ROM? You may need to
talk to the computer maker.

I'll let someone else advise you how to explain all this to young son. ;^}

RC
 
MAYBE all you need to do is to
boot from the WinXP CD-ROM and use the Recovery Console
Click to expand...
to run FixBoot ---------BOUGHT It used from friend when
they moved away, PC for son to play games on, they had
nothing they could find Disc wise but a few games. The
Disc of W98 was in one of the cases of one of the games.
He thought it was one of the game discs and was doing what
it said to do. He had loaded other ones OK. He had
loaded allot of game stuff from our discs. I keep our
discs orderly. THis PC for him to use was not even on the
internet. just something to play on/learn more about PCs
without doing damage to our main one.
even start to reformat
it - you may have to reinstall WinXP from scratch. :>(
Click to expand...

from what he said, I think it started to do that. He said
it got to some screen that said 36% or 39 % and then that
was all.
 
wife got it at yard sale at friend's yard sale who was
moving. nothing but game CDs were with it.
I had also posted on the 'Basic' heading the same
question.
looks like I will buy a new XP version and reinstall it.
I think he reformatted part of the drive or started to.

oh, this week my son gets to TAKE apart 2 OLD OLD PCs,
just to see what is inside of them. got an old 386 and an
old old dell, PRE-CD era ones, been sitting unused for
years.... gonna have him open them, take things out, to
see what hard drives etc are. He will do it under
supervison.
 
If the install process is locking up during the initial setup or install
process it is likely that there is a hardware problem. From experience I've
found that most of the time lock ups during setup or install are caused by
faulty RAM. There was a reason this PC was in a garage sale. The previous
owner was likely having problems with it and decided to dump it.
 
wife got it at yard sale at friend's yard sale who was
moving. nothing but game CDs were with it.
I had also posted on the 'Basic' heading the same
question.
looks like I will buy a new XP version and reinstall it.
I think he reformatted part of the drive or started to.

oh, this week my son gets to TAKE apart 2 OLD OLD PCs,
just to see what is inside of them. got an old 386 and an
old old dell, PRE-CD era ones, been sitting unused for
years.... gonna have him open them, take things out, to
see what hard drives etc are. He will do it under
supervison.
Click to expand...

Very cool project to do with your son, Don. Enjoy!
 
oh, this week my son gets to TAKE apart 2 OLD OLD PCs,
Very cool project to do with your son, Don. Enjoy!

--
Sharon F
MS-MVP ~ Windows XP Shell/User
.
YES he loves it. We got them apart yesterday evening.
Click to expand...
then this morning after I left for work, wife told me he
was taking more things out of them. he is having fun.
 
If your system is reading Windows 98 try restoring the registry.

Go to the command prompt (Start, Run, type in "cmd") and type in "cd". until
you get to c:\.

Type in "scanreg /restore" that will give you a list of dates the PC can be
restored to.

Choose one from the last time it worked properly. If that date doesn't
work..do the above again and choose another date.

Good luck!
 
Hi, Nellie.

Yes, cd.. will work - eventually. But why not just type cd \ and get to the
Root of the drive immediately?

In the "DOS" window (the Command Prompt), type cd /? to see a mini-Help file
showing all the switches and parameters available for the cd command. Or
dir /? or copy /? or....

RC
 
Hey RC..I learned the wrong way..and old habits are hard to break. Why we
used to do it that way is beyond me.

Thank you for the correction.
 
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