An alternative solution to this XP problem?

[heymike]

My friend's laptop won't start - it keeps rebooting at the XP title screen - and I'm struggling to find a solution that I can execute. I've got the wrong version of XP for making a boot cd from BartPE, and apparently making a regular XP boot cd won't do me much good... so now I'm wondering if I can install Windows 2000 on her computer without losing the files that I'm trying to rescue? I know that Win2000 offers options for a "clean install" (which wipes out everything) and then there's another option that (I think) would co-exist with whatever's already on the computer.

Am I nuts? Would this work?

[sg_ventil]

Try safe mode.

Press F8 before windows startup.

[heymike]

My friend's computer has XP installed and it doesn't look like XP has a safe mode like 2000 does. I'm assuming I would have to install Win2000 first before using safe mode... and therein lies the question of whether or not I can safely do this on a machine that has a messed up version of XP on it...

[heymike]

Oh yeah - I've already tried F8 in windows XP and none of the options looked very helpful. There are no options that would allow me to alter the startup process and continue. I forget what the options were, but I know I looked at them several times.

[bushidou]

Does the computer gives you options when pressing F8? XP got a "last known good startup configuration" when pressing F8 which is aktivated by pressing 'L' (after pressing F8).

[heymike]

Thanks bushidou, I'll try it... but I don't remember seeing that in the list of options. Even if it's there, I've got a feeling it won't work because these problems are never that easy to fix!!

[bushidou]

Okay here is a solution:

- make a bootable cd on another computer. Be sure that it dosen't choose the installation drive itself. winnt.sif:

[Data]
AutoPartition=0

[Unattended]
FileSystem=*

Also add theese lines to winnt.sif

[Unattended]
TargetPath=\WINDOWS_2

Beware the windows installation path: "windows2"

- Launch the cd on the laptop and do NOT erase the partition where windows allready is installed.

- When finsihed you should be able to pick out your old documents on the drive.

I have not tried it myself with XP. But I tried it with Windows 2000 some years ago, and saved some data. However only do this as an last option, there is no guaranty, that you won't loose your data

Let me hear if you try it and how things are working out.

B)

[heymike]

Thanks for the suggestion! I'm not sure I fully understand it though.

Is winnt.sif a file from the XP installation cd that I have to modify before making the boot cd?

and when I change that file, should it look like this:

[Data]

AutoPartition=0

[unattended]

FileSystem=*

[unattended]

TargetPath=\WINDOWS_2

or this:

[Data]

AutoPartition=0

[unattended]

FileSystem=*

TargetPath=\WINDOWS_2

I'm not clear on what you mean by "Beware the windows installation path: "windows2" "

And "do NOT erase the partition where windows allready is installed"... will it ask me if I want to do this?

So sorry for all the questions!! I'm a total rookie.