A few of you helped me about a week ago in diagnosing my computer when I was having some graphics card trouble. Anyways...I ordered a new desktop, or at least the parts to put one together. I got it put together and turned on and began installing windows. Windows installed without any problems(XP). It was a copy from an older computer of mine, I had Vista on my laptop, but I didnt like it. After Windows was installed I started installing drivers for my motherboard, again, no problems with install. Then after the motherboard installation was done, windows prompted me with a "found new hardware" message. I think it was the graphics card, so I canceled the internet search for drivers or whatever it does and installed the CD for the driver for the graphics card. It restarted itself and stopped at a DOS screen that said: Windows could not be started successfully because of a missing or corrupt file: WINDOWS/SYSTEM/CONFIG/SYSTEM32 And then it said something about restarting and pressing "r" to repair with the installation CD in, but everytime I pressed "r" the computer restarted itself or went to the same missing file screen. I'm stuck, any ideas? Sorry that file that is missing might be a little off, I am working from memory and am at work. I stopped messing with it around 12 last night. The XP CD is a reinstallation CD if that makes a difference. Thanks in advance, Floss
Are you booting into the windows xp cd? To get into the repair console you have to boot to the windows xp cd and at some point during the windows setup there is an option to press 'r' for repair.
Its as if my CD drive isnt recognizing the disk or something, it worked fine when I installed windows for 2 and half hours. When I get to repair it tells me to insert the disc and press enter. I press enter and it just tells me the same thing and it wont read the disc. I'm taking my work comp home tonight, so I'll be able to look things up on the internet while trying to work on the new comp, so hopefully that helps, but I'm not really sure what step I got stuck on and I am not sure what is installed and what isnt so it makes it more confusing. I saw Windows for about 15 minutes while my mobo drivers installed and that was it.
What you want to do, if you are trying to get into the repair console, is go into your computer setup/bios. In there find the section for boot order. Change the boot order to your cd/dvd drive first and then the hard drive second. Save your changes and reboot. At this point, if your xp cd is in the drive, it should boot to the cd. It will give you some message saying "press any key to boot to cd" (something of that nature). Once you press a key at that point, it will boot to the xp cd. From there you will get to a point where it states to press 'r' to repair. The reason you were able to boot to your xp cd when setting it up for the first time is because you had a new hard drive with no os and your computer normally looks for a bootable device, and since there was nothing on the hard drive it looked for another bootable device which was your XP CD. At least that's how I think it works. =P Anyways, if I were in your predicament, I'd just scrap the troubleshooting and do another reload of the OS. Format and reinstall. You should have not canceled at this point. Just keep clicking next until it installs the device or until you get some message indicating it didn't install. Also, make sure you get the correct video driver. If it's a nvidia chipset video card I recommend to go to nvidia.com and download the driver from there. If it's an ati chipset go to ati's webpage and download the driver from there. Make sure you choose the correct OS and the correct chipset version.
This is a clean computer, nothing lost, reformat and reinstall. You coulda had it up and running by now. Also.... Let xp install the drivers for the motherboard that came with the CD first, then go out to the internet and download new display drivers. Its safer to override an existing driver than to not let it finish and install a newer driver, simply because you will have the option to roll the driver back from windows. Also, why are you using the onboard video anyway?
I'm not using the onboard video, I have the CD that came with the Nvidia card. Thats why I canceled the XP auto install to put the CD in to install the driver from the CD. When I did that it said somethign to the extent of "This driver is not an XP verified driver....would you like to continue anyways?". I pressed yes...it restarted and thats when the probs started. However, I reformatted at lunch and left the computer installing the mobo drivers. I was kinda hoping to figure out exactly where I went wrong so I dont run into the same problem again because this is the exact point where I got stuck last time. So should I let XP try to install everything on its own? Or should I put CD's in to install drivers? Everything I have short of the mouse and the OS is brand new out of the box. The XP CD is from an older computer I had from around 02'. I have a Vista CD as well, but I wasnt a huge fan of Vista and it gave me a lot of problems. Just trying to give yall all the info I can so I can help you help me. BTW i really appreciate it Thx, Floss
I've never installed the windows drivers and I've never had any problems. Of course every system is different and there is not much harm in installing default drivers. You can always install new ones later. Also, you probably won't ever need to worry about this problem again if you make an image of your drive right after install. There should be a thread in this section about it.