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Home > Archive > alt.certification.mcse > November 2002 > oh the pain; somone please explain
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oh the pain; somone please explain
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| Dear All,
I am in pain. I had to wipe and re-install. I never wipe and
re-install. I know everyone says you reproduce all the screw ups
of windows when you reinstall over top of the broken installation,
but - I guess I've had good luck with it - I've consistently found
that in terms of time and satisfaction (mine and customers) the
repair or upgrade reinstall is more better good. However:
A customer brought in a computer that wouldn't work. She had,
bless her reprehensible heart, tried to upgrade XP home to XP Pro.
She got the Pro disk from someone who copied it from some other
disk. Her sister, who knows less than she does, tried to install
Pro. The install failed, and after that the computer was
unworkable. My customer called and I told her to boot from her
original Home CD (it was a relatively new machine and would boot
from the cd) and repair/reinstall xp home. It woudn't work. It
started the boot and then went to a blank screen with blinking
cursor, then froze. Nothing would work. I told her to bring it
in.
She did and she was right. The bios/setup was all okay. I
examined the Pro CD she had used and found out the i386 directory
contained only about half the necessary files. Whoever had burned
it got a bad burn and hadn't realized it. No viruses on the CD,
which was what I first thought. I tried various things, trying
to get to the original OEM HomeXP CD, which she had also brought
with her -- and she was right, nothing would work. You simply
could not access the CD. Finally, I booted with the good old
Win98 boot disk and blew out the NTFS partition, repartitioned,
reformatted and all was peachy keen.
But I can not figure out why the botched install of Pro (about
half the files, no ntldr or ntdetect) would make the PC unable to
boot to the CD ROM drive and start an install. How could that
interfere with the bios routines that route the boot to the CD?
How could it interfere with the functioniong of XP Home's setup
or, perhaps, the functioning of the CD drive? Anybody know?
TIA
Mike Flinn
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| Pavlov 2002-11-24, 10:17 am |
| Perhaps this is MS's new way of dealing with Piracy 
A copied disk is not exactly a legal copy now is it? Doesn't XP require activation - I wonder what happens when two people at different IP addresses activate the same code?
On an attempted helpful note, do you have a Win98 boot diskette? Boot with it and run FDISK to remove all partitions and basically reformat the hard drive. Then create a new primary partition and set it active. Then try booting with the origial CD that came with the new computer. | |
| Adam Leinss 2002-11-24, 11:24 am |
| Pavlov <Pavlov.emrwd@mail.examnotes.net> wrote in
news:Pavlov.emrwd@mail.examnotes.net:
>
> Perhaps this is MS's new way of dealing with Piracy
>
> A copied disk is not exactly a legal copy now is it? Doesn't XP
> require activation - I wonder what happens when two people at
> different IP addresses activate the same code?
It requires phone activation at that point.
Adam
--
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm
not sure about the former. - Albert Einstein
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"Pavlov" <Pavlov.emrwd@mail.examnotes.net> wrote in message
news:Pavlov.emrwd@mail.examnotes.net...
>
> Perhaps this is MS's new way of dealing with Piracy
> A copied disk is not exactly a legal copy now is it?
That's what reprehensible means.
> Doesn't XP require activation - I wonder what happens when two
people at different
> IP addresses activate the same code?
That was the customer's problem. She didn't get the disk from me.
> On an attempted helpful note, do you have a Win98 boot diskette?
Boot
> with it and run FDISK to remove all partitions and basically
reformat
> the hard drive. Then create a new primary partition and set it
active.
> Then try booting with the origial CD that came with the new
computer.
As I mentioned, that's what I did.
The question was, why a partial install would cause a boot off the
CD-ROM to start then stop at a black screen with a blinking
cursor. Any ideas?
> ---
> View this thread: http://www.examnotes.net/article82287.html
> Pavlov - Honest Member
>
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| Carl Gregory 2002-11-25, 5:24 pm |
| "MF" <wallacestevens54@yahoo.com> wrote in
news:lymdnYI_EdzcpHygXTWcqA@co
mcast.com:
>
> As I mentioned, that's what I did.
> The question was, why a partial install would cause a boot off the
> CD-ROM to start then stop at a black screen with a blinking
> cursor. Any ideas?
>
This may, or may not be it, but it makes sense. You were loading a CD that
came with the computer, right? It could be that it was trying to repair
the volume, and froze at the point it expected XP home.
Just a thought.
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