How can I cancel XP's initial installation setup?

[cdogg]

Thanks in advance for taking a look at this one.

I don't recall the exact error message I was getting, but Windows XP wouldn't boot on a customer's laptop. It would halt before the XP logo appeared. I tried a few things including an XP repair install, but it appeared the boot sector was corrupt. So I went ahead and backed up the drive, performed a clean install of Windows, interrupted the install while it was copying files, then moved the data back over to the drive. My reasoning behind this was only to fix the boot sector.

Now, it only boots into the XP initial installation screen asking for the Win XP CD to continue. I would prefer not to complete this, and instead get rid of whatever setting or file on the drive is telling Windows to boot into it. I'm pretty certain that the data I moved back over to the drive is all of the original data (nothing from the clean install), so I don't know what could possibly be instructing Windows to load the setup.

Anyone know how to do this? Google wasn't much help unfortuately for me...

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Einstein
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[BadBigBen]

I don't think you can at this stage, but I am not sure...

The only thing that you could try now (in my opinion), is to run a repair install on it again...

let's see what others have to say to this problem, before you go ahead and do the repair install over again...

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[DTracy]

Hey Ben,

Isn't that restart of the new install located in the boot.ini file in the root of the default drive?

If so, take that out and do a repair install to complete the fix.

Regards,
David.

 

[linney]

Use the Recovery Console to replace the Boot.ini file with Boot.bak or get a Boot.ini file that doesn't have XP Setup as the Default Operating System. This will the stop the Boot-Setup loop. (These are System and Hidden files).

HOW TO: Edit the Boot.ini File in Windows XP (Q289022)

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q289/0/22.asp

See instructions at the end of this article.

316417 - "Setup Cannot Upgrade Some Settings" Error Message When You Reinstall Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/316417/en-us

xp setup
thread779-576242

How do you stop an unwanted repair of XP?
thread779-746800

 

[cdogg]

OK, I should add that I've been attaching the drive to another computer using a USB adapter. All the files in root are the originals, including boot.ini. There is nothing in there that says "setup", just a typical entry that you would expect to see:

[tab]multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn /usepmtimer

Also, the XP CD is not in the drive during startup when Windows enters the 2nd phase of installation. It must be pulling some command from the boot sector, or there is a missing/corrupt boot file on the drive I'm guessing. I'll just let it finish the installation and see what I have to work with unless there are any other suggestions.

Thanks so far...

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Einstein
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