[Bernardo]

You're welcome.

[dell4700]

I forced shutdown. started up and its finishing the second part of install.

I hope none of my data is lost.

[Bernardo]

Here's hoping too. Usually on repair installs, I've been lucky. You'll end up with a Windows.old directory, more than likely, but, your documents "should" be safe.

[dell4700]

thanks data's safe...but some strange errors when opening programs. It may be because I need to update back to sp3 since my cd was sp1.

[Bernardo]

Originally Posted by dell4700

thanks data's safe...but some strange errors when opening programs. It may be because I need to update back to sp3 since my cd was sp1.

Possibly, but, some (probably most) programs may need to be reinstalled. Be sure you reinstall to the new Windows program directory. I would delete the old one when you have everything you need from it.

[dell4700]

My data actually was in its original place. it didn't go into a windows.old directory.
Thanks for your help. I was actually planning on doing a clean win 7 install soon so now's probably a good time since this xp install is pretty messy and corrupt.

[jack-o-bytes]

Hello there. Just out of curiosity did you have Mcafee anti-virus on that computer?

[dell4700]

Actually I used to have McAfee Enterprise installed, but I switched to MS Security Essentials before that incident happened. That's when it accidentally misidentified a system file. I know my computer was showing symptoms like that but I think my problem was unseated ram chips since I have had trouble with my ram slots before.