Win XP Pro installation SNAFU...

[Nodnarb]

All:

My friend's XP Pro box has been getting flaky lately. It hasn't had a fresh OS install for over a year, so I figured it was time. Anyway, I popped in his Win XP Pro disk and chose "upgrade". WinXP does it's thing, then shuts down and reboots into the install routine. After starting the install routine it comes back and tells me that it can't find an upgradeable OS on the system. I guess I should have chosen to wipe out the old XP install and do a totally fresh install. Anyway, now I can't get back into Windows at all. When I power down and back up it goes into the XP install routine and chokes at the same point regarding not able to find an upgradeable OS. How do I fix this so I can book back into Windows?

Please help!

Nodnarb out....

 

[mundane]

Is the XP copy you have upgrade only? Or full version?

 

[Nodnarb]

Full version. It's an academic version that Microsoft sells super cheap to universities. I paid $20 for it.

Nodnarb out...

 

[mundane]

An in-elegant solution is to A) make a bootdisk on another computer b) put the format program on said disk and C) wipe the hd clean. There shouldn't be any issues with 'upgrading' then. It's an ugly fix, but it should work.

 

[oog]

can you boot up the installation from the xp disk again? start the process over again.