Please Help! Urgent

E

EnglandUK

New Member
Hello,

I have a major problem with a friends computer, he asked me to upgrade him to XP Pro from windows ME and I agreed, the computer is a packard bell Imedia but the model isnt listed on the machine and the packard bell site dosent recognise the serial number (probably because its around 5 years old).

I insert the windows disk and select fresh install instead of upgrade, I should have mentioned in the first paragraph that he was having trouble with ME and getting lots of error messages and random restarts, hence the fresh install and upgrade.

So the install goes along okay until about half way and I get a warning 'couldnt find installer for diskdrive' contact your hardware vendor and then another for the DVD drive. I continue anyways and then another warning pops up saying this application failed to install properly (or something along them lines) 'system' and there is a system icon showing and my only option is too carry on which I do, anyways the install is complete and I try to boot up windows by selecting start windows normally and it wont load up, i tried in safe mode and it still wont work it says that some files are missing or corrupt and it cant continue, i am currently re-installing but I dont think anything will be any diferent this time round.

Is there anything I can do to save this computer? or could I somehow roll it back to windows ME (after wiping the drive) and then choose too upgrade from there, I have looked on the packard bell site and they only offer drivers and firmware for some of the hardware used in this machine, I dont think my friend has any disks that came with this computer originally as is was given to him as a present from someone else and now i think I have killed it :confused:

Anyone help?

cheers

EDIT: just to confirm I have installed windows again and still have the same problem, it says 'we are sorry blah blah blah but windows failed to start properly this could be to do with any recent hardware or software changes' and then it gives me the option to start with last known settings that worked, safe mode and start normally, i have tried em all and it just it just restarts and goes through the process again. I am really screwed with this one is it beyond repair? can anyone help?

Thanks again
 
Last edited:
What are the specs of his computer? (model number?)

After you install it, boot from the XP CD and try and repair Windows and see what happens.
 
TheChef said:
What are the specs of his computer? (model number?)

After you install it, boot from the XP CD and try and repair Windows and see what happens.
Click to expand...


I am not 100% on the specs as its nto my machine and I cant access it fully to check, its got a p3 cpu and a 20gb HDD with 128ram i think.

I have booted from disk as you said, how do i use the recovery console? I have logged in but cant figure out what commands to enter.


Thanks for your reply
 
If you hit "enter" to enter windows setup, it should find a previous version and ask if you want to repair it, I believe. I am going from memory.
 
I deleted the orginal partition on my first attemp, I have a failed version which I running a repair on, but when it starts to copy files from the cd it says that some files are missing, a .dll file and a file called p3.sys and portcls.sys. I can press escape to run the setup without these files but i think thats why windows hasnt installed properly the first time.

maybe I will have to get the guy to look for the original OS disk he dosent think he has and try to re-install that then upgrade, is there any other way around this with it being a OEM computer, after deleting the whole partition is there anyway of me being able to work with what i have here, that being his computer with a totally clean drive and the XP pro OS?
 
Well it sounds as if you have a faulty CD, but it seems rare that that would even happen. Send an email to Microsoft Tech Support, but don't expect anything amazing to come out of that either.

I didn't really understand the last paragraph. If you can't load files from the CD then that's quite a quandry that you're in.
 
it's an HP? If you were forced to make the CDs yourself (they aren't labeled nicely) then they are probably corrupt. The software must have some issues. The only thing you can d with a HP install CD is reinstall Windows
 
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