I messed up my installation of XP by resetting during shutdown (:rolleyes: at me). After that I couldn't start up as I'd get a really quick blue screen and a restart after the XP loading screen. I think it was complaining about a registry file missing but I can never make out what it says since it's only visible for a fraction of a second.

I booted from my XP CD and it was supposed to detect my previous installation. It didn't. So what I did was made a new installation which I am on right now. It works fine except the internet connection is a bit sluggish and of course none of the programs installed on the original installation are available. I've managed to save all the important files onto another computer through a network. I ran the boot CD again and now it did detect an XP installation, the new one. :cry:

Is there anyway to repair my old installation or to quickly get the programs from the old installation to the new one?

Hi Juba,

Did you ever find a solution to this problem?

I;ve got the exact same issue and can't face re-installing all my applications in the new OS !

Thanks

Rob

Yeah I did

I took a videocamera and recorded my computer starting up. Then I slowly replayed the tape and I was able to check the error message. It turned out that one of the registry files indeed was damaged, the software file. I went on the Microsoft support site (http://support.microsoft.com/) and put in the error name/number in the search. From there I found a good step by step guide on how to replace the files through the Microsoft recovery console. It wasn't difficult at all and all my files were safe :p

Try to find out exactly what the error message is and go the Microsoft support site and it should help you fix it.

Good luck!