accidental install

message from sayduckshun on 1 Jun 2004

make: Gateway pre loaded Win XP - Home edition

When the power went off & came back, my dad accidently kicked off the
XP setup, The XP CD was in the CDrom and I think the machine must have
booted from the CDrom.

The setup is failing after reaching 34% and a blue screen with the
error comes just for a micro second so I cant read what the error is.

I tried to go to the recovery console but its asking for an admin
password. I tried various passwords including blank, tab etc.. but its
not going through.
I dont believe i have set this up.

I also tried going into safe mode by using F8 but it doesnt work.
Tried to do Ctrl + alt + del twice at the welcome screen but it doesnt
work..

any thoughts on what I should do next?

thanks for your help,

regards,

Harish

roger replied to sayduckshun on 01 Jun 2004

Hi,

The password in the recovery console is that used in the instalation
of XP, if it came preinstalled maybe Gateway could be helpful in that
direction (or try 1234)

If you can get to the Recovery Console, try running the commands
fixboot

Reboot and see if it is Ok, if not
fixmbr

Reboot and see if it is OK.

If it started to install maybe it changed the boot.ini, if it is a
FAT32 system you could try booting with a Windows 98 boot disk or one
from www.bootdisk.com

How to Edit the BOOT.INI File in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q289/0/22.asp

If there are two lines having at the end /fastdetect, make a back up
copy and try erasing the first line.

Finally, if all this is unsuccessful or you cannot get the password,
you could do a repair-install. It should preserve your data.
Detailed instructions here:
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

Good luck, hope this helps.

Archived message: accidental install (Microsoft WinXP)