Any XP Gurus Here?

[Julie Moriarty]

I'm having a problem with an old XP computer that I have been using as a CAD machine and am hoping someone can help.

I had to repair XP on the machine. Shortly after I did it was asking for the verification code. I couldn't find the code at the time so I figured I'd get back to it before the 30 days had passed. In the interim, we put our house on the market and the realtor had us hide everything. The computer was disconnected and stored in a closet and I forgot about it.

Today I took it back out so I could access AutoCAD. After hooking everything up, I booted the computer and it was again asking for the code. I had it in ready and when I clicked to verify the code, the screen went to the desktop but there was nothing on it. No icons, no Start bar, nothing. The mouse arrow was there and I was able to control it but I could do nothing else. Not even Control_Alt_Delete worked. I've got a lot of my CAD files on there that I don't want to lose.

Maybe since Microsoft is no longer supporting XP I'm SOL. Can anyone provide any help or insight?

Thanks,
Julie

[Phil Thien]

Any chance there are two monitor ports on this machine, and connecting to the other one would display the primary desktop?

[Tom Stenzel]

More questions:

Does the hard drive have a recovery partition you can boot to? What about the XP recovery disks? Long gone?

When the family XP 'puter would sputter and die (twice in 10 years) I booted it with a Knoppix CD, one of those Linux things. With that I was able to access the hard drive and copy everything I wanted to USB drives or the floppy drive. Yes it had one of those too. I was always able to get everything off the hard drive.

-Tom

[John Huds0n]

see if this helps
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-...tion-Product-/

[Rick Gibson]

I would just pull the hard drive and put it in a second machine as a second drive. All your files will still be there and readable from either another xp machine or windows 7 machine. You can also get one of these. http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...554&CatId=3770 Lets you connect your old hard drive to another machine without opening up the second machine. I've used one for a few years now and have a few older hard drives I use for external storage.

[paul cottingham]

It could be any number of issues. Honestly, you are better off taking it to a reputable place, as they should be able to fix it. At least get them to take the data off it.
honestly, what you describe is probably too complex to fix via remote on a message board. But I'll bet it can be fixed.

[George Bokros]

Can you boot in Safe Mode? Maybe in Safe Mode you can get the files off.

[Julie Moriarty]

Any chance there are two monitor ports on this machine, and connecting to the other one would display the primary desktop?

I get the background image so it's not a monitor problem.

More questions:

Does the hard drive have a recovery partition you can boot to? What about the XP recovery disks? Long gone?

When the family XP 'puter would sputter and die (twice in 10 years) I booted it with a Knoppix CD, one of those Linux things. With that I was able to access the hard drive and copy everything I wanted to USB drives or the floppy drive. Yes it had one of those too. I was always able to get everything off the hard drive.

-Tom

The hard drive is probably okay. The problem comes up when I click the button to enter the code. It opens Windows and looks like it's about to load in the shortcut icons and the start bar but then the loading stops and all I see are the background image and the mouse arrow. I have a feeling the problem is the program is looking to connect to Microsoft but since they no longer support XP, there's nothing to connect to.

I'll see what I can do about finding the recovery disk.

Can you boot in Safe Mode? Maybe in Safe Mode you can get the files off.

I press F8 and it loads the standard mode. I can't seem to get it into Safe Mode.

Weird thing is after a while I went back to the computer and saw Norton had automatically opened a window. It wanted to check for updates but couldn't because I'm not getting network connection. When I clicked on Help, Internet Explorer opened but it too couldn't connect to the Internet.

[Raymond Fries]

I have a CD here that I could give you a copy of that I used to use in my IT job. It is a boot CD with Ghost and other utilities. I used it to make images of computers. It has a browser on it so you could boot to it and copy your files to an external hard drive or flash drive. PM me if this would help you. Good Luck with it.

Maybe you could use google to find a verificiation code. Just a thought.

[Phil Thien]

Ohhhh!!!! I get it. This is a known problem. After a repair install of Windows XP, you have to get IE upgraded before you can activate. I think I've typically done this by booting to command-prompt only mode (actually the directions below say safe mode so do that) and running the IE8 installer from a flash drive. After that, you can reboot normally and activate.

Here, read this:
http://aaron-kelley.net/blog/2010/03...place-upgrade/

[Julie Moriarty]

Phil, I checked out the link you provided and it described the problem I'm having perfectly. The solution is booting up in Safe Mode but I can't. I hit F8 and it immediately boots in regular mode and I'm back where I started.

I can access DOS mode but I don't know the command to boot into Safe Mode, if there is one. I'll keep trying F8 and see if one takes...

[Phil Thien]

Phil, I checked out the link you provided and it described the problem I'm having perfectly. The solution is booting up in Safe Mode but I can't. I hit F8 and it immediately boots in regular mode and I'm back where I started.

I can access DOS mode but I don't know the command to boot into Safe Mode, if there is one. I'll keep trying F8 and see if one takes...

As soon as the machine pretty far into the POST (Power-On-Self-Test), start tapping F8. Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap. Maybe a second between them. Eventually you should get a menu where you can select "Safe mode."

Often is the previous boot is unsuccessful, you will be prompted with the same menu. So you can also wait for the boot to just start and then Ctrl-Alt-Delete to reboot. Hopefully you get the menu on the next go-around.

[Curt Harms]

More questions:

Does the hard drive have a recovery partition you can boot to? What about the XP recovery disks? Long gone?

When the family XP 'puter would sputter and die (twice in 10 years) I booted it with a Knoppix CD, one of those Linux things. With that I was able to access the hard drive and copy everything I wanted to USB drives or the floppy drive. Yes it had one of those too. I was always able to get everything off the hard drive.

-Tom

That's what I'd recommend too. Any of the popular linux distros will mount XP or other Windows partitions and you can use the build-in file browser to find and download in desired files or folders to portable storage. Then try to fix the problem. The trick here is you'd need a working PC to burn a DVD or USB. DVD is slower but less likely to have boot issues than USB. Here's a popular choice: http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php. I'd recommend the Cinnamon version, it looks and works a lot like 'classic' Windows. The documentation link tells how to create the DVD. It's useful to have a DVD like this around for just such occasions. It's hard to believe you can have a functioning computer with internet access (wifi can be a challenge) running off only a DVD or small USB but it's true.

[Robert Engel]

If its important enough to you, save yourself the aggravation and take it to a computer shop.
If they have an XP license I'll bet they can fix it for not much money.

[Phil Thien]

If its important enough to you, save yourself the aggravation and take it to a computer shop.
If they have an XP license I'll bet they can fix it for not much money.

I'd just do exactly what I'm telling her to do. She is so close, she just needs to get that boot menu.

When she is done she can even do the POSReady patch (which turns XP updates back on until 2019) and she can even get Microsoft Security Essentials working w/o the "unsupported" carping, if she finds the 4.4.304 installer.

XP is actually a decent O/S. Most installs are 32-bit and limited in that regard, but other than that...