Please HELP! Need to reset drivers in XP

[elkinm]

I have a problem with my system. I made a more detailed post in the upgrades section here.

That one has most of the detais but I wanted to ask specificaly about the drivers.

For some reason when I renamed the inf folder in c:\windows and did a repair install the repair install was incomplete. For instance the drivers seem to have not been installed at all as when the system reboots it has no knowledge of the cdrom drive, no keyboard and no mouse.

Anybody now a way arround it and to force windows to install all the files and drivers in the inf folder and others and still keep my registry and system settigns intact.

Whay would it all of a sudden not install certain files and folders?

Thanks
elkinm

 

[elkinm]

I also deleted all the files form the windows\system32\drivers directory, but the files seem to have been resoterd now as using the recovery console, I see the inf and drivers forlder with many files.

Any ideas why it cannot read my CDrom or access my mouse or keyboard?

Thanks again

 

[elkinm]

Actualy I also deleted the contents of the windows repair folder hoping that it would restart the repair process from scratch. That folder had a config.sys and an autoexec.bat file. Is is possible that these files actualy foaded the needed drrivers, but since they were deleted, the it cannot load the drivers hence my problem eith teh cdrom, mouse and keyboard.

If this is so, anybody knwo of a way to restore the repair files or have the repair process create a new set. Or simply have the repair start from new so it would do everyting instead of asking to continue the upgrade.

Thanks

 

[elkinm]

actualy config.nt and autoexec.nt and some other files. Anybody now of a way of restoring these?

Thanks

 

[jroc]

sheeeesh...you got yourself in a world of hurt...I dont know what made you thing to first....rename the .inf file..then go and start deleting files in the system32 folder....and now to top it off...delete files in the restore....now no backup of config.sys...Your looking at a reinstall of windows...that will overwrite your current install......I've done that and my installed programs stayed...just Windows was Installed.

 

[elkinm]

I do want to reintsll windows, but from my experince, if I select a clean install instead of upgrade then it will reset the registry entierly, so although I will have my files, most of the files will waste space.

If you know that it actualy does a clean windoes install and still keeps the running programs and desktop intact then please tell me what to do just in case.

Thanks

 

[jroc]

This is the only thing that I can think of...is to boot into a dos prompt...like use a windows98 boot disk..with cdrom support...once you get the dos prompt...insert you windows xp cd..then type D:\I386\winnt32.exe or winnt.exe D=what ever your cdrom is assigned..the command winnt.exe is for upgrading from dos...but I still think you have to some how copy the contents of the I386 folder to the hard drive to accomplish this.

 

[Shamus MacNoob]

My oh my why do people delete things like this oh well do this


Start the install and walk through if you boot of cd rom just choose the partition where xp is installed and then hit "r" it will repair it and wont change the apps that are installed , if you do it from inside windows after you enter your key code choose advanced options and check off you want to choose the partition and folder where to install then again as you continue you see the partition where xp is already installed and choose to repair that copy that will fix all that mess you made and you wont loose your programs

good luck

 

[elkinm]

I did as you suggested, and installed from dos using winnt.exe and it started instaling but now aggain when it is instaling devices and it is at about 34 min left it restarts.

Is there any way of finding out what coused the crash. Maybee if I can correct the file it will work.

Thanks

 

[elkinm]

I bought a new hard drive and installed XP on it. The install went great and it whent past the 34 min mark and on to completion.

I did notice that the first blank screen flash occured at 34 min right were it crashed before.

I logged into windows for the first time and when I right clicked on the desktop the screen froze. A seccond later the system restarted juste like it did with the old hard drive. Then the monitor would always go into off mode at boot. I used safe mode to uninstall the display driver and then it loaded windows aggain, but after a few minutes it always turned off the monitor requiring a restart.

Any ideas what is going on?

 

[Hipster Doofus]

Format the new drive again. Strip as much as you can out of the case, reinstall xp, then add one piece at a time till you find the culprit.

 

[elkinm]

That would not have worked as I decided to buy a video card just to test it and it worked fine. with a radeon 9000 pro.

The thing is that the power suplies, several Antecs, all showed below specs on all rails in particular the +5. I once had a Antec wich had above 5v and the card ran fine. That one was bad as it fried my motherboard as it had poor over voltage protection. All the antecs show below speck on my new K7N2, and the most powerful one did the best as it could boot windows but only for a minute. Any chance to recover it?

The problem with upgrading or runing it is that for some reason I have no keyboard or mouse support when running and repairing does nothing to fix it.

I whent to the new install and coppied some of the registry files. I can copy my old system restore registry files and the system boots into windows normaly but unfortunately since I don't have a working mouse or keyboard I cannot log on or use the system. Then I coppied the new install system registry file and the rest eventualy and only left the old software file and now when I try to run it I get an error saying something like while updating the password, the return status of the password indicated that it is not the same as the current password and the system restarts.

Is ther any way to reset all passwords and run the system or

better yet, murge to old system file with all the settings and the password with the new system file that actualy has good drivers and works with the mouse and keyboard.

 

[elkinm]

I did a clean install of windows and then coppied the backed up software registry hive and doccuments and settigns folder and that restored my system and all the settings boack to normal.

Thank you everyone.