Upgrade to XP Pro from XP Home....when XP Home not working

  • Thread starter Thread starter legal process
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L

legal process

Came back to the office on Monday to find out my system had crashed and it
no longer boots into Windows (XP Home). The only thing that happens is I get
the screen that gives me option to enter safe mode, a prior restore, or the
continue... each time, it takes me back to the same screen. I am able to get
into Bios and, should it be necessary, make changes. I'm told by tech
support from manufacturer, just prior to having to be charged a fee (past
warranty period... 4 years old) that Windows was probably corrupted but that
my hard drive is okay because otherwise I wouldn't get the page that would
ordinarily allow me to do a safe mode, etc.

Was told to get an OEM (or whatever) Windows CD containing full Windows. I
cannot use the "safety" CD's from the original purchase because the "repair"
option is not there... only able to reinstall which means reformatting and
losing data and settings.

I was able to borrow an OEM CD for Windows Professional and was hopeful that
performing an upgrade would take care of the problem.

Since I cannot get into Windows at the present time... short of pulling the
hard drive and duping files over to another machine at work and then copying
them back over later on (which can be a hassle in and of itself, especially
when my boss might take a dim view of my doing personal stuff at work), I
cannot otherwise save data/settings.

Question: Can an upgrade with Windows Pro CD accomplish what I need to do?
(i.e. make sure I don't lose my stuff and fix my computer's loss of windows)

Thanks.

--Jerry Berger
 
Update time:

My employer provided me with an XP Pro CD and the key code. I tried to
upgrade, but this was not an option... The program wanted to reformat my C
drive instead. I tried again with the CD provided with my system and tried
the "repair" option instead of the install option. (Tech support said not to
use the "R" option.) I got a c: prompt and punched in "dir" to see what was
listed. What I got was an error message that read:

"An error occurred during directory enumeration."

Does not sound very good. Anyone have any suggestions?
 
legal said:
Came back to the office on Monday to find out my system had crashed
and it no longer boots into Windows (XP Home). The only thing that
happens is I get the screen that gives me option to enter safe
mode, a prior restore, or the continue... each time, it takes me
back to the same screen. I am able to get into Bios and, should it
be necessary, make changes. I'm told by tech support from
manufacturer, just prior to having to be charged a fee (past
warranty period... 4 years old) that Windows was probably corrupted
but that my hard drive is okay because otherwise I wouldn't get the
page that would ordinarily allow me to do a safe mode, etc.
Was told to get an OEM (or whatever) Windows CD containing full
Windows. I cannot use the "safety" CD's from the original purchase
because the "repair" option is not there... only able to reinstall
which means reformatting and losing data and settings.

I was able to borrow an OEM CD for Windows Professional and was
hopeful that performing an upgrade would take care of the problem.

Since I cannot get into Windows at the present time... short of
pulling the hard drive and duping files over to another machine at
work and then copying them back over later on (which can be a
hassle in and of itself, especially when my boss might take a dim
view of my doing personal stuff at work), I cannot otherwise save
data/settings.
Question: Can an upgrade with Windows Pro CD accomplish what I need
to do? (i.e. make sure I don't lose my stuff and fix my computer's
loss of windows)
Click to expand...

legal said:
My employer provided me with an XP Pro CD and the key code. I tried
to upgrade, but this was not an option... The program wanted to
reformat my C drive instead. I tried again with the CD provided
with my system and tried the "repair" option instead of the install
option. (Tech support said not to use the "R" option.) I got a c:
prompt and punched in "dir" to see what was listed. What I got was
an error message that read:
"An error occurred during directory enumeration."

Does not sound very good. Anyone have any suggestions?
Click to expand...

A Windows XP OEM licensed CD/product key cannot be used to perform any
'upgrades'.
OEMs do clean installations only.
 
Shenan Stanley said:
A Windows XP OEM licensed CD/product key cannot be used to perform any
'upgrades'.
OEMs do clean installations only.
Click to expand...

Update time....

Pulled the hard drives (actually two... one being a slave to the master) and
brought them to work. After a bit of doing (stupid network), I was able to
copy all files from the slave and the D (i.e. backup) drive over to a
Seagate external drive. However, still couldn't access the C drive to the
master. Upon advice from a techie independent contractor guy we use at work,
I checked Control Panel-Administrative Tools-Computer-Management-Storage,
etc. to make sure that the partition was available and healthy. Sure enough,
it was there and healthy.... but (IT'S A BIG BUT) it appears that the C
drive reflects absolutely NO files in it whatsoever (that is, whatever could
be available for use IS available for use). Honest, I absolutely swear that
I didn't run any program from systems disks that would have even begun to
format the disk or eliminate date. I must assume that whatever crashed the
system also dumped the files. So, before I go ahead and purchase a new hard
drive, the techie guy is going to lend me an old hard drive to make sure the
chip set on my system can handle a larger hard drive (that is, cache and
amount of memory). If I want, I can keep the extra drive... although I'd
rather get a new one. In any event, I'll have to bite the bullet and format
the replacement, reinstall whatever I can, and try to make the computer
livable again.

Question (you knew there'd be one)... Can anyone recommend a file recovery
tool/software/utility (be it freeware or inexpensive otherwise-ware) that
can be used to recove email (dbx) files and paperport data files? (in
addition to anything else)

Thanks.

--Jerry
 
"Shenan Stanley" <[email protected]> wrote in message
Click to expand...
Question (you knew there'd be one)... Can anyone recommend a file recovery
tool/software/utility (be it freeware or inexpensive otherwise-ware) that
can be used to recove email (dbx) files and paperport data files? (in
addition to anything else)
Click to expand...

I have just done something like that, last weeek, I had an external 40
Gb disk and something happened to the MBR.

But a free German program did access everything in it and I have
copied most files (some were corrupted with lots of strange letters in
the file names and could not be copied) but it takes a long time. I
had to access root (one can access "deleted" too in that program but
root is much better and then one can mark each folder and then copy
it.
The free program that worked is http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/uk/welcome.htm

I found a link to it from a danish website about photography, there
was a lonk to the jpg-recovery program that they have too, to rescue
jpg's from broken or formatted memory cards.

nora
 
nora said:
I have just done something like that, last weeek, I had an external 40
Gb disk and something happened to the MBR.

But a free German program did access everything in it and I have
copied most files (some were corrupted with lots of strange letters in
the file names and could not be copied) but it takes a long time. I
had to access root (one can access "deleted" too in that program but
root is much better and then one can mark each folder and then copy
it.
The free program that worked is
http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/uk/welcome.htm

I found a link to it from a danish website about photography, there
was a lonk to the jpg-recovery program that they have too, to rescue
jpg's from broken or formatted memory cards.

nora
Click to expand...

I aleady looked at this particular program, but not sure if it is what I
need. Of course, I still have to replace my hard drive, set it up with
reinstalled program and then try to recover files from the old drive. In the
meantime, is anyone familiar with freeware called "Recover My Files"? It
also looks promising.
 
Shenan Stanley said:
undelete.com

Might help. Get the trial - see what it sees.
Click to expand...

Thanks.... I'll keep it in mind, but (as stated elsewhere), will have to
wait until machine is up and running before checking drive. Since the trial
has a time limit on it, I'll wait until I can get to it.
 
I did try everything, from downloaded programs and trials to linux
live-cd-s in several flavours to ubuntu and so on, but only the
german program did anything.
Linux said the drive letter was gone/or the MBR broken.
But I could not use any linux to recover the files.
For partitioning ans erasing and moving partions and not destroying
anything while doing so, the linux live discs were very good. Have
done so several times. I have two different live cd's that can do
that, but there are more out there.
So I recommend the german program unless you can fix the MBR (some
linux live distros may be able to do that) I think it was ultimate
boot cd or something.

nora
 
nora said:
I did try everything, from downloaded programs and trials to linux
live-cd-s in several flavours to ubuntu and so on, but only the
german program did anything.
Linux said the drive letter was gone/or the MBR broken.
But I could not use any linux to recover the files.
For partitioning ans erasing and moving partions and not destroying
anything while doing so, the linux live discs were very good. Have
done so several times. I have two different live cd's that can do
that, but there are more out there.
So I recommend the german program unless you can fix the MBR (some
linux live distros may be able to do that) I think it was ultimate
boot cd or something.
Click to expand...

Windows Ultimate Boot CD...
FDISK /MBR
 
You mean http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ and the link to the windows
project?
Yes, I used the linux live cd version. worked fine. Did not try the
fdisk/ mbr utility I think but I can play with it once I have
checked that I have copied everything, then i can try differnt things
like that one. I might have tried it.

nora
 
Wow, the UBCD windows promises more, I must try that one. Heref rom
the website:

"2. Data recovery. Your hdd won't boot but the data is OK. The UBCD
will give you read access but you can only write the data to either
FAT or FATS32 drive nor can you write data to a USB hdd. UBCD4Win
gives you full read/write access to your drives. This means that if
you have two NTFS hard drives you could copy your data from one hard
drive to another to rescue your data. If you have a USB external hard
drive you will be able to plug it in and copy the data that way. You
can even connect to your home network and copy the files off that
system to another connected to the network. With original UBCD you
wouldn't be able to do this."

nora
 
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