Some key sites and insights I learned after spending a full day and a half resurrecting a good friend's computer:
- You will only get the "repair in place" option from the Windows XP install disc if you have an exact match between the type of XPs (i.e., Windows install is Home Edition and the install disc is Home Edition). I tried using a WinXP Pro disc to do a repair install of a Home Edition install and it wouldn't give me the option to do so.
- PC World article on how to create a bootable CD (Linux) that will recognize a USB hard drive (key to getting off data from an unbootable computer).
- Good instructions on how to do a Windows XP Repair Install. It helped me figure out the first point on needing to match XP disc to actual install.
- Key instructions on how to restart a stuck MSI installer instance on XP.
- And finally, the mother of all articles on how to do a manual fix of an unbootable XP install. This was the key to resurrecting the install without having to reinstall the applications.
Important Note: there are two sets of important typos on the above link.
a) The first two lines on the first code section should read:
md c:\windows\tmp
copy c:\windows\system32\config\system c:\windows\tmp\system.bak
b) In the third code snippets the software, sam, security and default files are all under
c:\windows\repair\
not
c:\windows\repair\system\
Hope that helps someone out there!
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