Fortwilliam

Apologies for not making myself clear. I have 2 hard disk drives. Each is partitioned into 3 logical drives. My orginal XP installation was on the C drive but now it is on the H drive. I expected that all the windows folders would disappear when I did the new installation but was surprised when the original Programs folder remained on the C drive. I didn't really expect it to be straightforward to replace the new Programs folder with the old! Now to dig out all those installation disks! Thanks for the reply.

After scanning my XP Pro computer with a Kaspersky Rescue CD it would not boot up. I have two 1Tb HDDs partitioned into 6 drives. The original installation disk would not present me with the option to go into the recovery panel, nor could it find an XP installation. It only showed me the 6 drives and the option to pick one for the installation. Two days later having used BartPE and getting my Warcraft folder copied onto an external disk, all my other docs having been backed up last week, I installed XP on the drive that had the Warcraft folder only on it. The installation was successfull. I now have access to all my files on the other drives including the original Programs folder. The orginal Windows folder has gone. Question: can I replace the new Programs folder with the original Programs folder? I've been through a number of crashed computers with new installations but this is a new one on me. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks for that. The graphics card worked fine until I did the original driver update. It worked fine again after I did the roll back. It works now with the latest driver in OpenGL mode but the framerate is very low. When I return from holiday I think I will do a clean install of XP. Thanks again.

Hi again, Tried the driver you suggested and have my videos back. Yeah!! BUT my Warcraft is hanging again :confused:. Need my Warcraft, withdrawal symptoms already :D.

Thanks for your further reply, the info you requested: Model: Tiny Computers MS-6741 1.0 OS: Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3 (build 2600) Main Circuit Board - MSI MS-6741 1.0 Processor 2.40 gigahertz AMD Athlon 64 128 kilobyte primary memory cache 512 kilobyte secondary memory cache Bus Clock: 200 megahertz BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. Version 07.00T 04/02/01 Drive 196.72 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity 23.21 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space Memory – 1GB Pagefile - 1524MB Graphics Card - NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS Driver: 9.1.4.7 This driver for the graphics card is not the latest. Some time ago, around the start of the year, I uninstalled the driver and installed the latest driver. Big problems with an 'infinite loop' error each time I tried to play Warcraft. After a lot of research I reinstalled the old driver and Warcraft played fine. From recollection the new driver was trying to make the card over-perform. I'm truly not sure if this is when my problems with videos began, but you have certainly got me thinking. Any further thoughts? Regards.

Music files play fine.

Anyone any idea why playing a video in any player, Windows Media, Real Player, Pixela or Windows Media Classic makes the program hang with CPU usage showing 100%. The quickest way to get out of the program is to have it pre-selected in Task Manager under Processes. I have 1GB memory and 22GB free disk space with no other programs running. Flash videos on the internet play fine. Because the problem is 'global' I don't think that the settings in any particular player can be at fault. Losing what little hair I have left.

Recuva has worked for me in the past. Recently though I knew there were over 100 images on my SD card but it would only show 9 old images. I used DiskDigger to get all my image back and it's free as well.

You need to be very careful deleting Registry Files - don't do it manually UNLESS you know exactly what you are doing!! I use CCleaner, it's free, which will clean your Registry for you automatically and allow you to back it up just in case. It will also clean out temporary files etc. I suggest you download and run CCleaner, restart, and try your installation again.

Could there be something in the registry from the first failed installation preventing furher installations?

So his insisting that there is more to this than meets the eye is not rude? Why does he not make it clear exactly what he is saying? What does he think is going on? All I did was seek some help for my problem. Never thought I would be treated like this.

It's clear your 'Mule' is the size of one you would buy in a toyshop. Why can you not accept that you don't know everything?

To quote from the page you gave a link to above, [/url]Warning! #1 Should you do a repair install and is it the best choice? A Repair Install is not foolproof and should not be considered the cure-all fix for non-boot situations. Warning!! #2 If the Repair Option is not Available What should I do? Most important do not ignore the information below! If the option to Repair Install is NOT available and you continue with the install; you will delete your Windows folder and the Documents and Settings folders. All applications installed that place keys in the registry will need to be re-installed and will require the original install media. Warning!! #3 Updates must be applied before connecting to the internet after a repair install. Reapply updates or service packs applied since initial Windows XP installation. Please note that a Repair Install using an Original pre service pack 1 or 2 XP CD used as the install media will remove SP1/SP2 respectively and service packs plus updates issued after the service packs will need to be reapplied. So it is clear that a repair is not foolproof. All my service packs and my updates are intact. All my files are secure. So I think I choose the best option. It is clear in my mind that it was the 'poxy' driver. Deleted - no boot. Restored - successful boot. Don't know why you appear to be so miffed. As I said before I learned a few things along the way and had succesful resolution to my problem. So thanks once more.

I have read elsewhere that sometimes an XP repair can cause additional problems. I was trying to take a 'safer' route. Oh well! It was a bit of an adventure, and I learned a few things along the way.

Thanks for all the suggestions. Have got it sorted :D. I tried copying the file, with the File Manager in BartPE, from the RECYCLER folder onto a USB stick and I could see loads and loads of files being transferred. But when I opened the USB stick on my laptop nothing appeared, hidden files and folders shown are shown. The stick properties showed that it was full. Tried this again with the same result. Formatted the stick and tried again - nada. Anyhow I copied the file into the My Documents folder on the non-booting HD and was able to open it :D:D. Looks like all the files were renamed. However the last one in the list had the .sys extension. I was able to copy that onto the USB stick and rename it snaprtt.sys, copied into the Drivers folder and now everything is back to normal. If you can think of why the deletion of this file cause the computer not to boot I would be interested to hear from you. Thanks again.