Bad XP Repair session using Nlite, Cant get out of setup!

[Goanna]

Hello All. I have been using nlite for a while but recently I used it to make an CD with RyanVM's hotfixes and I then used it to start a repair session on windows.

Unfortunatly, I mistyped a character in the CD Key box in nlite and now it pops up asking me for the CD Key, but the trouble is, I enter the key and it still tells me it's invalid!

So, then I went back and used my original XP SP2 disk and re-did the repair, but even so it's still telling me my key is invalid.

I looked around on several sites for info and it seems when you start a repair session it holds on to some of the original information. In this case, I think it may be holding onto nlites original answer file, with the wrong key entered, and that may be somehow interfering with me entering any other key in it's place. Is that possible?

Does anyone know of a way I can get out of this repair session and boot back into XP normally? Then I could maybe retry the repair using the normal disk without the unatended mode. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Edited September 7, 2007 by Goanna

[Goanna]

Okay well it's been a couple days since I posted this and I havent gotten anywhere really. Some people are telling me to install to another drive/folder and try and move everything over but if there is a way just to get the computer to stop booting into setup mode that would be preferable. Or if there is a way to get to the information put on the pc from the first nlite install, then maybe I could continue with the repair using the correct key.

[Sancho]

Are you certain the key is for this exact version of windows? I've had trials, OEMs, school volume releases, and they all have different ones.

Is that installation of Windows that important? You could just run setup from the beginning and install to a different folder; then either attempt to fix the old installation and delete the new one, or delete and reinstall the programs that need to be and continue using the new one (and delete the old Windows folder).

[Goanna]

I guess it's going to come down to that as I cant seem to find any information on how to get out of setup any other way. I have alot of programs installed and I am in the middle of a project that would be alot easier to complete if I could access everything as-is. Once I finish that project up, if I had to then I could backup everything and start fresh with a clean install.

[Goanna]

The parallel install/repair didnt work. It wouldnt let me use any restore date from before the situation originally occured .

Someone told me the way to shut off the setup program must be in the registry. I looked around and found a key called "SetupInProgress" with a value of 1, and I changed that over to 0 and restartred, but it didnt help.

Does anyone know of any other registry settings that may be responsible for booting the pc into setup mode?

One other option I am thinking about is upgrading to vista home premium, but the trouble is vista only lets you do an actual upgrade from inside windows . When you boot to the vista disk it says "run setup from windows to upgrade". That's the academic upgrade version though, maybe a full version will let me run from the disk?