Backing out of Winxp Professional Installation

[imported_Couchpotato]

A friend of mine has an old Dell laptop with Windows 2000 professional on it. He tried to install Windows Xp Professional on it with a dirty disc. He got halfway thru installation and got so many error messages that it wouldn't continue. He gave the laptop to me to install windows but the only thing I have is Windows XP home. This thing will not start with the XP disc in the drive to even begin installation.

How would I proceed with installing XP over a 2000 installation over a 1/2 Win professional installation? Any ideas...

 

[lxskllr]

Format the drive and start over. What do you mean it won't start with the XP disc in the drive?

 

[RebateMonger]

What's a "dirty disk"? Does that mean he tried to install a second OS (XP) on a disk with Win 2000 installed? Or does it mean the disk has errors? Or ???

What kind of error messages was the friend getting?

 

[dguy6789]

I think he means the XP CD Rom was physically dirty and it caused read errors during the installation.

 

[corkyg]

Originally posted by: dguy6789
I think he means the XP CD Rom was physically dirty and it caused read errors during the installation.

Should be an easy fix. Contact MS - send them the damaged CD and they will replace it. (Provided it is a legitimate retail copy.)

Otherwise, it is as lxskllr says.

 

[imported_Couchpotato]

Ok my friend has a Dell Lattitude Model C600/C500 and it's very old, it has 128mb of ram in it and Intel Celeron.

Here's the deal. I went over to his place last night to look at his laptop and he has Windows 2000 professional installed already. He had a virus/spyware and tried to do the fixing himself. He tried to install Win XP professional from a bootleg disk and I looked on the bottom of the disc and noticed scratches, holes and stuff stuck to the bottom of the disk. He got 1/2 way installing XP when the errors began and I knew it was the cd. I took the laptop home with me and tried to do a fresh install of a win xp cd I have and it wouldn't work. Even when I try to use the xp disk I have the error msg below say:

An error has been encountered that prevents setup from continuing. One of the components that Windows needs to continue setup could not be installed. Data error (cyclic redundancy check).

When I try to go into safe mode under Win 2000 professional I get this error message:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \winnt\system32\config\system.

I can't even get into Dos to even reformat the drive.

 

[lxskllr]

The optical drive might be getting sketchy. If it boots from usb, try some kind of Linux.

 

[imported_Couchpotato]

I put another Windows xp cd I have in and it says Press any key to boot from cd.....

Pressing a key did nothing because it's stuck at that screen.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Couchpotato
I put another Windows xp cd I have in and it says Press any key to boot from cd.....

Pressing a key did nothing because it's stuck at that screen.

Could be a failing CD/DVD drive.