help please

[wardyboyo]

i have a made a pc out of mostly new components:

 

1gb ram-new

intel celeron 2.6ghz-new

dvdrw drive-old

cdrw drive-old

AsRock p4i65g mobo-new

80gb Western Digital hdd-old

oryxx 650w psu-new

 

thats all i realy know about the system because the parts were bought for me..

 

anyway its an old hdd and when i try to boot it goes straight to the screen which asks about wheather i want to start windows normally or in safe mode etc..

 

but whichever one i select after about 10 seconds it just reboots and does the same thing over and over (the selection screen)

 

and in safe mode it loads the drivers and then just restarts after loading them, no windows xp boot screen

 

ive been told i need to do a repair install but i dont have a XP cd nor i cant look on the hard drive for the i386 folder because i have tried connecting the hdd to another pc and it just freezes before the xp boot screen

i really want this to work because i spent all that money..:/

 

any help will be greatly appreciated

[RandyL]

Hi ward;

How did you install XP without a CD?

[wardyboyo]

i had the hdd out of my old rig..

 

and it come with xp pre-installed :/

[AdvancedSetup]

Well at this point if you don't have a Windows XP CD then it's going to be almost impossible to repair. You need to either get a hold of an XP CD or think about formatting the drive and installing some distribution of Linux.

 

Basically Windows XP was configured with thousands of entries for completely different hardware and in some cases it's smart enough to reconfigure on the fly, but in most cases it requires either manual repair or a full re-install.

 

Also, once repaired you will need to re-activate XP since it was not sold or installed on your current system, thus invalidating the license agreement of XP from Microsoft.

 

If you're not a game player and you don't need to do wireless from the system then Linux actually is quite a bit like Windows in many regards except it's free.

However if you then have other Windows applications that you want or need to run, then once again you're back to needing a Windows XP CD.

[wardyboyo]

soo i wont be able to back up any of my files?...because as i said i cant connect it to another pc:/

[wardyboyo]

can i get a live cd version of linux and acces the hdd?

[AdvancedSetup]

Yes if you can get one or make one from another computer.

 

Or as said, you just need to "borrow" an XP CD. No I would not format or even do an install right now if you have data on that drive that you want to get back.

 

A repair of XP should be okay (and even a re-install if you're careful and follow directions so as not to format or recreate a partition).

 

You can also probably purchase an OEM CD of XP Pro for about $150 from the Internet at some shops.

[wardyboyo]

3 issues

 

1.i dont have $150

2.even if i did it would be useless because im in the uk

3.can i just install the PClinuxOS distribution on a second hdd?

[AdvancedSetup]

Yes you can but not really sure how that helps you to get back your files on the Windows XP disk unless you mean to burn to CD/DVD or copy over a network.

 

All kinds of options, up to you though really what you want to do. Let us know if we can help.

[wardyboyo]

ok thanks fr your help so far :D