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Has anyone encountered such a thing?

M

Mashed Potato

Senior member
My buddy called me the other day asking me to fix his computer. I am by no means a computer expert, but I am comfortable enough to look around within a system. He needed it quickly so I just did a clean install after backing the files he needed. When I turned it on it gave me a few errors: Could not run so and so program because wininet.exe is not available. It did this for a few programs (I realize I should have written this down to be more specific, sorry). So the clean began.... I could not install any programs to clean the system. Norton's, ad-aware, hijack this would not work, etc.. I decided to use my external to backup his files. It would give me the usual ding-ding when xp realized it was there, and then it dissapeared. I could not access it. I tried a flash drive as well, same thing. If he did not need it so quickly and if I had more knowledge on what to do I would have tried to fix it without reinstalling. I took my external out of its enclosure and plugged it into his computer, backed it up that way and so on and so forth. The computer is fine and I got paid but is there an easier way to fix this problem? Has anyone encountered such a thing? Thanks very much.

-a learning potato

 
when you say clean install, did you reformat the hard drive and perform a true clean installation of Windows, or did you just do a repair install, or an overlay install of Windows? The only way to be sure all corruption is removed is to format the drive and do a clean install. If there's sufficient corruption even an overlay install won't fix everything, and can lead to the problems you experienced accessing other programs, since their registry entries were likely overwritten during the re-install.
 
Yes it was a reformat clean install. I also partitioned the drive with 2 sizes so he could put just his info on one so IF it screws up again he could reformat just the os drive. I advised him to backup his info on dvd also. When I said i was not a computer expert, I should have specified, but I was implying that I probably used the "clean install" route more than it is needed. I love these forums and refer to them quite often. I would much rather learn how to repair a computer without wiping it clean and starting over. So have you heard of anything like this? Is there an easy way to clean the system without reformatting?
 
Well, nine times out of ten, when someone brings me a computer to fix, it's usually the better idea to back up the data and do a full reformat and clean install.

However, it is possible to just re-install windows from setup in the same partition, which will write a brand new install and registry, but tends to cut off previously installed programs. I don't recommend this as a first-line approach. It can be useful if you can't get into windows to back up your data, although there are other ways of doing that as well.
 
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