[Evolint]

OK, hi!

Ive registered here to try to get some help to my problem after finding a thread similar to my problem earlier today, unfortunately it does not solve the issue!

After experiencing constant crashes and hangs while using my PC over the last few days, and toying with the idea of a format, today I booted to find the "system has recovered from a serious error" screen, where it prompts you to choose between safe mode, normal mode etc etc. After choosing normal,,,AND safe mode it tells me the system cannot be started because the file "/windows/system32/system" is missing. No idea why this has happened, but it is the final straw and the idea of a fresh harddrive sounds quite nice anyway.

Now for the real problem:

This format business is nothing new to me as I have this rig for 5+ years and have formatted successfully several times in the past, however this time, doing everything in the same way, after asking me wether I want to repair or just install, and agreeing to the user license, it hangs with the message at the bottom of the screen "Searching for previous versions of Microsoft Windows".

Have left it to it for the last hour, thinking maybe it is just being exceptionally slow this time, but nothing is happening at all. What is wrong and what can I do to fix this?!

Last point, I have tried to just repair the system, using the same process as above, however when I choose the partition upon prompt (number 1, the only one on my system), again the PC hangs and nothing happens. The only option is to cold restart the computer.

Any advice or solution is greatly appreciated.

[Lance1]

OK, your system is 5-years old. Does it have a floppy? If so I uploaded a zip file with DOS boot files and a little app called Delpart. Copy the files to a floppy and boot from the floppy. At the A: prompt type delpart and hit enter. With this app you’ll be able to totally destroy the partition containing Windows XP. After the partition is destroyed, boot from the XP CD and start clean.

[Evolint]

It does indeed, and thanks very much. I will be trying this as soon as I get to the Mrs house tomorrow so I can get this onto a floppy disk. I am using my laptop at the moment which unfortunately doesnt have a floppy drive.

Just one question, what will be different after I have used this? Do I boot from disk as usual with my XP disk in, and install in a different way? Will it still check for previous versions of windows?

Again, thankyou.

[Lance1]

Being that the hard drive will no longer be partitioned, it will not look for XP because it is now a blank hard drive with nothing on it.