Uninstall SP2 from non booting XP

pgh13

Having nightmares with friend's PC. It's an E-Machines Celeron which I now read may not be compatible with SP2. I've tried to load an XP CD to try to run recovery console but it complains there is no HDD space for swap file. The HDD is NTFS but I thought setup should cope with that. I haven't yet tried to see if it will use a USB drive for swap space. Any ideas?

dorsetbob

Hi

Try this link
_http://support.microsoft.com/kb/875350

It may help

Bob

pgh13

Thanks, I tried that earlier after booting with Bartpe and got the

Bosnia is selected as the language for standards and formats, or for non-
Unicode programs. This language is not supported prior to Windows Xp
Service Pack 2. Please see readmesp.htm to select a different language.

Problem

compufunk

How far does the boot process get when booting from harddrive?

Can you boot into safe mode or safe mode with command prompt?

Have you tried last known good configuration?

pgh13

It won't boot in safe mode or from last known good. Enable logging shows it loads as far as Mup.sys , doesn't load ACPI Uniprocessor PC and a whole lot more but finishes by reporting loading drivers the last being cdfs.sys

Analoguesat

It must have a pretty small hdd if theres no room for the swap file!

You will be better off using the xp disk to start again - boot off the cd and format the drive.

Analoguesat's message to the world Analogue forever!

pgh13

I put another HD in to give me some space to run recovery console. I then got to the point where I could run batch spuninst, but it still wouldn't boot, so I then copied the I386 directory to the additional drive and ran setup from that to do an in place upgrade. I had to swap the drives around to get it to boot from the temporary directory; However when I get to identifying where to install Windows it sees a Windows directory on what is now the D drive and says it will overwrite all user information. It's a long time since I did one of these but shouldn't it offer the repair option?

Analoguesat

It should do - thats option r from one of the menus isnt it.

What Id do is this:

Put the big drive in as the master drive, and disconnect the other one. Do a clean install of XP, then reconnect the small drive a slave and copy any important documents onto the big drive.

Then leave it!

I hope this machine isnt going on the internet - sp2 patches some pretty nasty security holes!

Analoguesat's message to the world Analogue forever!

pgh13

It's formatted NTFS and there's 52GB free but NT setup isn't seeing the NTFS partiton as usable for its temp files

I know what I should do but I'm trying to save the silly woman's irreplacable photographs and applications.

That's the annoying thing about 'favours' isn't it? If it was at work it'd be 'No backup? That's a pity! Oh Dear, never mind

pgh13

You're right of course. This all started as AOL won't work via modem - and no AV software.

Analoguesat

Slave the disc into your computer and copy the files over - then you can mangle the drive as much as you like.

At work I once managed to wipe a hard drive with 3 years worth of irreplacable files on it. (Only following orders!) Nothing backed up - oh dear - you have just learned an important lesson havent you.

Analoguesat's message to the world Analogue forever!

Analoguesat

Ah - Ive heard similar reports from the folk at work. I just tell them to find a better ISP!

Analoguesat's message to the world Analogue forever!

Channel Hopper

Where's the *snigger* smilie when you need it ?

There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness"

compufunk

The usual story with people who are still connected via dialup.

I dont know how many times I've ended up doing a "favour" that had me pulling my hair out and took way longer than I had anticipated.

When it gets to the stage you seem to be at, I usually say F it and do a clean install after recovering any data I can. If anything is lost, blame them for not having any AV.

A good option for recovering the "irreplacable photographs" and whatever else is to use a live linux cd. Boot from the CD, attach a removable drive and copy everything to the drive (or a network location) before the clean install. Backtrack is a good distro for this.

The problem you are running into with the free disk space not being recognised is a strange one. Not one I've come across.

This is not something I haven't done since the days of Win 98, but you could remove the drive, install it in another PC and try to recover from there, I'm not even sure that will work with Win XP. It'll probably throw a wobbly because of the different hardware.

Do those machines have a recovery partition? If so at least you will avoid all the headaches of installing drivers after your clean install. (If thats what you decide to do).

Good luck, those thank you jobs are great fun You'll be lucky to get a bottle of plonk or a six pack for your efforts.