Windows XP HOME Boot Failure--Help!
Hi Everyone,
My daughter's Sony Vaio laptop (2 years old) runs Windows XP Home. When starting the computer, the boot sequence stalls at the 'installing personal settings' screen and will not finish. It gets thorugh the BIOS but fails to finish the Windows installation. This just started happening a few days ago.
Attempts to boot from the 'last know good setting' after hitting the F8 key at power up also fail as I think she had inadvertantly had the system restore function turned off. A real mess. Brought on by a heavily spyware/trojan/virus infected machine I suspect.
I suspect a Windows XP corruption as an error message of that nature will eventually appear after waiting 10 to 15 minutes for the boot to try to fininsh. I did not write the error number down and the message now does not reappear at all. My fault on that one but I was tired and frustrated.
Sony only includes a system recovery disk and not a Windows Install CD with the laptop so I want to try to avoid going back to the beginning and losing all her data. Sony did me no favors on that one. Oh yes most of the data was not backed up. Of course. Murphy lives.
Is a Windows XP Home repair installation program or CD available anywhere either as freeware, shareware or commercaily?
If so, any suggestions as to how to fix this mess?
Or do I give up and just start over from scratch with a complete new reinstall?
I have access to a Windows XP Pro set-up CD from my company's IT dept BUT with a Windows XP Pro repair install on it. Will that work? I know Home and Pro are not exactly the same. IT here is not too keen on lending much assistance with this problem and I understand.
I am a novice at this. I am willing to learn by OJT but need some guidance from anyone with solid suggestions.
My thanks in advance.
N1LQ
My daughter's Sony Vaio laptop (2 years old) runs Windows XP Home. When starting the computer, the boot sequence stalls at the 'installing personal settings' screen and will not finish. It gets thorugh the BIOS but fails to finish the Windows installation. This just started happening a few days ago.
Attempts to boot from the 'last know good setting' after hitting the F8 key at power up also fail as I think she had inadvertantly had the system restore function turned off. A real mess. Brought on by a heavily spyware/trojan/virus infected machine I suspect.
I suspect a Windows XP corruption as an error message of that nature will eventually appear after waiting 10 to 15 minutes for the boot to try to fininsh. I did not write the error number down and the message now does not reappear at all. My fault on that one but I was tired and frustrated.
Sony only includes a system recovery disk and not a Windows Install CD with the laptop so I want to try to avoid going back to the beginning and losing all her data. Sony did me no favors on that one. Oh yes most of the data was not backed up. Of course. Murphy lives.
Is a Windows XP Home repair installation program or CD available anywhere either as freeware, shareware or commercaily?
If so, any suggestions as to how to fix this mess?
Or do I give up and just start over from scratch with a complete new reinstall?
I have access to a Windows XP Pro set-up CD from my company's IT dept BUT with a Windows XP Pro repair install on it. Will that work? I know Home and Pro are not exactly the same. IT here is not too keen on lending much assistance with this problem and I understand.
I am a novice at this. I am willing to learn by OJT but need some guidance from anyone with solid suggestions.
My thanks in advance.
N1LQ
0
Comments
I mean boot to the cd as if you were going to do a fresh install and along the way you may come up to the screen that says you already have windows xp would you like to repair. I've done it several times from a regular winxp home & pro cd and it usually works.
Give it a shot it shouldn't hurt anything. Like I said this screen takes place before it even reaches the new installation part.
Sorry if this post seems dumb but I'm not too familiar with the sony repair disk.