Logon disappears on partition copy

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jane Lane
  • Start date Start date
J

Jane Lane

Hi all, I wanted to do my little daughter a favour with a faster hard disk I
recuperated from elsewhere, so I copied her existing NTFS partition on her
new disk using Partition Magic. Then I replaced the old hard disk by the new
one.

The problem is then that at first looks the PC starts up ok but when WinXP
is at the point of asking for the user, it just shows the logo but no users
to klick onto! This happens also in safe mode. We can't get in. Seems the
copy process "forgot" to copy the user identity.

Any suggestions how I could recover (without a full OS+soft
reinstallation)...? Many thanks for letting me know.
 
Hi Jane,

Sounds like it didn't like the change in hardware. The profiles are probably
still there, it's just that the boot does not get that far. Follow these
steps to do a repair install which should preserve your data, settings, and
programs:

1. Insert the Windows XP CD into your computer's CD-ROM drive or DVD-ROM
drive.
2. Restart your computer. If you have to, change the BIOS settings to start
from
the CD-ROM drive or DVD-ROM drive, and then restart your computer again.
3. At the "Welcome to Setup" page, press ENTER.
4. Press F8 to accept the Licensing Agreement.
5. Use the arrow keys to select the installation of Windows XP that you want
to
repair, and then press R to start the automatic repair process.
6. When Setup is completed, activate Windows XP.

Note that you will need your Product Key for this procedure, so have it
handy before you begin.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Win9x
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone
 
Thank you for your reply Rick I followed your procedure. It ended in a
"fatal error": "... failed to install product catalogs. The setup log files
should contain more information." and it was also specified: "... no message
text for syssetup.dll". The setup can't continue, it stops the same way at
repeated tries.

.... so it seems to become a full re-install after all. Too good I don't need
to do that every weekend!
 
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