Hi,

I have 2 PCs each running Windows XP SP2 on Celeron 2.0 GHz with 512 MB Ram. The Win XP installation on the first hardisk has become currupt and the system freezes midway during the booting process. I wanted to perform an upgrade installation to fix the problem. I took out the first PC's hardisk and attached it to the second system. Since the first HDD is not booting, I had to boot the system from the second PC's hardisk. After that I put the Windows XP installation CD into the CDROM and ran setup. I choose to perform an upgrade installation which I wanted to perform on the currupted HDD. However the installation once launched, did not allow me select the HDD on which I wanted to perform an upgrade install. It actually ran the setup on the healthy HDD from which I had booted and performed the upgrade installation on the healthy HDD.

I want to know if there is a way to prevent this and make the setup perform the upgrade installation on the second hardisk (not the one which is used to boot the system).

Thanks in advance.

rational611

Just leave the corrupted drive in the PC where it belongs and put in the winXP CD. Change the bootorder so that CD-ROM is primary bootdevice.
Wait for WINXP setup.
Choose Repair.

regards Niek

I am not so sure about this, but I think when you choose the "Repair" option after booting from the WinXP setup CDROM, the recovery console is loaded which does not perform a upgrade installation. But as I said before I am not sure about this. Could you please double check and confirm that the Recovery Console can be used to perform a upgrade installation?

rational611