Can't stop XP from installing over original? 2

[CraigHappy]

Hi

I have just had my friend on the phone, who lives in France, I'm in the UK and he used some spy ware software this morning, which went fine, but then for goodness knows what reason, decided to re-install windows xp again over his original xp.
He launched it from within xp, now everytime the system gets to one point in the install, it restarts itself and the the whole install process repeats.

I've got him to try booting to safe mode and also running from boot cd install and just doing repair, but it just keeps coming back to the looping!

Is there any way to stop this process?

Many thanks, Craig.

 

[SuperAmit]

If it were me and I was reinstalling Windows, I would boot from the CD and delete the partition and procede with a fresh format and install.

 

[CraigHappy]

Hi,

Yes I think I would do the same, but I backup quite often, but he hasn't backed up at all, so a lot of stuff would be lost, which he would rather not loose!

 

[Diancecht]

What about slaving the HD on another PC, backuping the data and then renstalling?

Cheers,
Dian

 

[CraigHappy]

Sadly as he lives in France, he has no other system to be able to slave it to.
Not that other people in France don't have PC's, just people he knows. lol

 

[acl03]

When his machine reboots during the install, and it says "Press any key to boot from cd..." he should NOT press any key a second time. This only needs to be done once per installation of windows. This is probably what is happening.



Thanks,
Andrew

 

[CraigHappy]

Thanks very much guys for all you inputs, he contacted Dell in the end and they have talked him through a complete new install, sadly he has lost every thing, but it might teach him to back up more often if nothing else!

Cheers, Craig.