Windows XP Installation All Messed Up

[cc333]

I'm trying to restore a computer of mine for some software that won't run on anything newer very reliably.

The problem is, the installation seems to be broken.

I finally got it to boot by fixing a few things, but I think the problem stems from the fact that the installation was made with drive E: as the system root, rather than the usual C: (which it now is).  As a result of this, the registry is a complete disaster.

So, is there a better way than finding, one by one, every reference to E: and correcting it to C:, or is there a better, more automated way?

EDIT:  I should add that I would prefer to preserve this installation because it is updated fully, but if there are no alternatives, I am willing to start over and reinstall.

c

Edited August 20, 2021 by cc333

[jaclaz]

You probably want both coa2 and registrar lite.

Coa2:

https://www.pcmag.com/archive/change-your-address-4491

http://digilander.libero.it/rareware/coa2.zip

Registrar Lite (version 2.x) is hard to find as the good guys at resplendence have excluded their pages from being archived on Wayback Machine, very likely the "current" Registrar Registry Manager 9.20 would do anyway:

https://www.resplendence.com/downloads

Just in case latest-latest doesn't work, good ol' one can still be found here:

ftp://tasha.eecs.umich.edu/95/reglite.exe

jaclaz

 

[cc333]

@jaclaz Thank you for the links!

However, I have given up for now, as it deteriorated from bad to worse:  it wouldn't boot at all no matter what I did, so I could never get far enough to even be able to try doing anything with the linked software.

So, I installed 32-bit XP instead, and everything actually seems to be working as expected, so perhaps I don't need 64-bit.

Now I need to figure out how to update it in a reasonable manner.  The unofficial SP4 is good, but a little buggy in my experience.  It might be worth a try, though, because I really loathe to install so many updates by hand.  At least the media I used (a Dell reinstall disk) came with SP3.  That leaves me with about 12 years worth of updates to install instead of 16 years worth...

c

Edited August 21, 2021 by cc333

[jaclaz]

Unless you have (or need) huge amounts of memory 32 bit would do nicely, XP64 - from what I read, never used it for enough time to have an own opinion - seems like a "hit and miss" game, on some hardware it works fine on some other has lots of issues that - though probably solvable - are more difficult than 32 bit because 64 bit is much less popular.

jaclaz

[cc333]

OK, I had everything configured as I wanted, and it was really running quite smoothly, which was refreshing after that ordeal with those defective backups.

However, the hard drive decided to fail on me, which was totally frustrating, because it meant doing everything all over again.  To that end, I repurposed an old SSD I had laying around and then ordered a Dell XP x64 SP2 Reinstallation disk (this machine is an Optiplex 390).  I figured might as well just install x64, since I had the disk, have 8 GB of RAM that it would be nice to use all of, and, well, the hard drive died, which was a good excuse, for I probably would've stayed with 32-bit XP otherwise.

The installation went smoothly, but since Dell doesn't offer official support for XP x64 on the Optiplex 390, there are no XP x64-specific drivers offered, so I instead had to hunt them down myself.

Fortunately, it wasn't too hard, for the official-for-this-model 32-bit XP and 64-bit Vista driver packages each happened to include some 64-bit XP drivers, seemingly by chance.  I was thus able to piece together enough "official" drivers to get a 100% working setup with all hardware fully operational.

As for updates, I got it kinda-sorta mostly current using RyanVM's update packs slipstreamed into a copy of the Dell disk, plus a bunch of manual installation of other packages (namely, .Net Framework and WMP11 (and their respective updates), plus the VC++ redistributables) after the install was finished, so I'm pleased to say I have accomplished what I wanted.

c

Edited September 5, 2021 by cc333