XP Install fecked!

Inquitus

I was OC'ing the other day, and after alot of unsuccessful boots, due to pushing the limits of my system, I reverted to stock settings and booted.

I have an XP registry issue, I get to the windows welcom page and none of the User Accounts appear. The moise pointer still works though.

I have booted to Knoppix Linux from CD and know that all the Hardware is fine. I have a XP disk. I cannot do a repair install, as my original install is OEM and came pre-installed on the machine. I can however boot from CD to the Windows Recovery Console, which I am largely unfamiliar with. I have run Chkdsk and Fixboot, but neither has helped the situation.

It has reached the point now, where I am looking at slaving my HD to a mates mahine, recovering my data and doing a re-install.

I should have made backups, I know, and I will be installing Norton Go BAck after I resolve my problems.

Any Ideas?

Thanks,

Inqui

KdjaCL

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

If you stick a new registry , you will find nothing is installed so your entire Program Files is now redundant kinda like a reinstall.
Up to you what to do i would take anything i needed off the drive and wipe it and start again.

kdjac

kmb

Found this,maybe some help?

Re-Installing Windows-XP
If you need to reinstall Windows-XP and want to keep all your current installed applications and settings:
1. Start Windows-XP & shut down all running programs.

2. Find the location of your source files (a folder called "I386" , May Be on Your Install CD or a folder on your HD) (make sure it has all the .cab files in it and the program file; WINNT32.exe )

3. Run WINNT32 /unattend ,,, For example, \I386\winnt32 /unattend (type this command into the RUN box, then press ENTER) Your computer will do the rest.
*********************************************

I've often needed to do this to repair something that had gotten corrupted and I didn't want to do a clean install.

Above taken from http://help.lockergnome.com/index.php?act=ST&f=70&t=31463
Maybe worth a try,kind regards kieran

SantaHoe

Try booting into safe mode... you might still be able to login as administrator.

CtrlSource

Hmm. Yeah, if you can log on at all in safe mode you can try a system restore back to before you had the problem.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/304449

Sounds like your SAM registry database is damaged.

When the Welcome screen is on, press Control+Alt+Del twice and you'll get the Windows 2000 style logon box. Try entering Administrator as the username and enter whatever password you set for the account, try no password if you never set one on it.

Failing this there is something you can do. There is a backup of the SAM database in C:\WINDOWS\repair\sam. Copy this file to the C:\WINDOWS\system32\config directory in the recovery console and reboot. This should restore the accounts database to a usable form (no customised accounts but will include the default ones). Try running System Restore afterwards, if that doesn't restore the accounts then you'll need to recreate them.

Inquitus

Tnx Karsini,

that is something new to try! I have tried all other suggestions to no avail.

I have backed up my data from my HD and and going to re-install at the weekend, however I will give this a go first.

Tnx to all who have tried to help,

Inqui