Help for an acquaintance

Nick Grana · #1 February 22nd, 2006, 10:54 PM

This guy really messed things up. He first tried to install XP over ME and got to the part where it says you will loose all your data, he stopped the install.
So he says it was still working good in ME but at boot offers the 2 options of boot, XP or MS. Been working a few weeks (according to him). But this morn it gets errors and will not boot. He also gets corrupted registry msg. Booting from the boot menu, no safe mode, hangs anywhere on step mode, just goes to a c: prompt and no further commands will it do. You can type *_(^*$##
and enter and it just stays at the c: prompt.

Some of the error files are XP only. Why they are popping up in Windows boot is beyond me (except he killed the overinstall of XP). I made an ME_bootdisk (off another system) and it shows the partitions of c: being OK. I can also access c: from the a: prompt and see his system files are there. I copied scanreg from another machine and tried to run it off flop to c: but cames back saying no backups available.

As I left him, I told him to get me the ME install CD which he can't find, beg, borrow, or steal. As a last resort, buy one.

I say this is a job for "CLEAN INSTALL" if I ever saw one.
Thoughts?
Thanks.

**Murray S.** · #2 February 22nd, 2006, 11:01 PM

Howdy Nick:

Try booting to DOS with the ME startup floppy and running the fdisk /mbr command..

Murray

Nick Grana · #3 February 23rd, 2006, 04:10 PM

Thanks Murry. That's about the only I did not try. I was able to use flop start disk and get to fdisk to see that he at least had just 1 dos partition.
It will let me do a scanreg (copied it from other machine) but cames back corrupted registry. Scanreg /restore comes back,,,,no backups available.
Will try it soon and get back.

Nick Grana · #4 February 23rd, 2006, 07:34 PM

I told him this morn (don't know why as I'm making $$ on this deal) I was done until he gets an ME Install CD. I knew in my mind this was heading here.
Thanks.