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how do you repair a corrupted Windows XP?

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EvilCloudStrife

R. Kelly is my roll model
Joined
Feb 15, 2003
Location
Mesa, Arizona
i have buddy and im trying to help him out, he was overclocking and then all the sudden when he trys to boot it says kernal error. so he cant boot. i thought there was a repair console in the windows xp cd, but i dont know. he doesnt want to reformat and lose all his data. someone please give me some insight :)

thanks, ECS
 
Do you know how to get to safe mode. It won't get that kernal error unless it's trying to boot windows. You should be hitting f8 before that.

And if that really isn't working. Then what is the error?
 
Jimbob7 said:
Just reinstall (and dont format) he won't lose anything, it just replaces the windows files etc.

Scott.

It would wipe out the registry, so he may not be able to use any installed programs. However, as you said, the data will remain intact.
 
Repair install

Boot to the XP cd -- Press enter to install XP, then F8 for the EULA, then it should see the old XP install and ask if you would like to repair the XP install and you press 'r'. Its called a repair install. This will leave the registry intact, all programs functional and data untouched.

dew.
 
As Long as he doesn't reformat his existing file system will remain then I would suggest that you beat this guy in the head about backing up his stuff. .02 given
 
does it come up as a blue screen of death? usually if i boot to the cd and use the repair console, doing a chkdsk /r has fixed lots of blue screens on the machines i've worked on at work and fixed my parents computer the other day. Might give it a shot, although it takes a while if it's a large drive.
 
dew042 said:
Boot to the XP cd -- Press enter to install XP, then F8 for the EULA, then it should see the old XP install and ask if you would like to repair the XP install and you press 'r'. Its called a repair install. This will leave the registry intact, all programs functional and data untouched.

dew.
That's one way of doing it, the 'upgrade-in-place' method mentioned above also works (may work better since it throws the Registry to kingdom come).

And hey ECS, we've all stomped on our Windows installs at one time or another (sometimes inadvertantly, others deliberately). :cool:
 
there are 2 repqirs in XP - the first one - repair console, then you can get a 2nd repair option that does overwrite only windows files - NOT the registry either.

if you do an install and tell it "do not touch file system" that does write over the windows stuff and reg.
 
ecs, also try reseating mem/pci devices/gpu/hdd/optical drives etc. i've seen this happen before and it worked.
 
if his computer doesn't give him any problem when it is not OVERCLOCKING, the problem is not WinXP. Therefore, you and He need to look at OVERCLOCKING by lowering FSB and V down a little bit.

this kind of thing happens when you OVERCLOCK too much.
 
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