My Nightmare
Written: Apr 15 '02
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Easy to Use When it Works
Cons: Lack of Recovery Options
The Bottom Line: Despite bad experiences I am still using it and I still recommend it.
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| serena21's Full Review: Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition (N09-00048) For ... |
First let me say that I support Windows XP for an OEM manufacturer. Second, let me let you know that this is not a complete review. I could go on and on about the various features of windows xp. I could tell you all the multimedia enhancements and the built in wizards, but I'm going to tell you about my personal experiences.
(This may sound greek to some) I have a 850 Mhz AMD Athalon processor on an Abit KT7A motherboard. I started out with 288 MB of RAM. An ATI Video card and a Creative Labs sound card. I had been running Windows 98 on my computer for almost a year.
I started out trying to install windows xp as an upgrade to see if I could get my new scanner to work properly, because it wasn't working right under windows 98. I have had prior experiences with doing windows xp as an upgrade and I knew that if I installed it and the scanner worked, I could just as easily uninstall it from add/remove programs. It's quick, efficient, and works just about flawlessly. (Uninstalling that is)
My first problem came when the computer locked up during the setup process. Then I restarted and setup resumed, but it left me with several blue screen error messages that I was familiar with. All of them pointed to memory. I removed all but one memory chip and tried to continue the installation. When that didn't work, I tried to cancel the install, but was left not being able to boot to windows.
So, I ended up formatting the hard drive and installing xp as a clean install, which worked great. I booted to windows for the first time and it detected all my hardware without a problem, because the drivers were all included with the operating system.
Now it's about a week and a half later. Below is something that I posted to a newsgroup. It is a fairly common problem in windows xp and one that I experienced a few hours ago.....
This error comes in various forms, all of which mean the same thing. The one that you are getting may appear on a blue screen, but may also be a blue screen you see just before a restart. Occassionally the message comes on a screen of black and white text. Windows xp is designed to restart on system failure (blue screen). If you are already having the problem with it rebooting and you cannot get into windows, it's too late to turn it off, but if you are up and running, you go into the system properties, click advanced, and then click on startup and recovery settings. Uncheck where it says automatically reboot. (I highly recommend doing this, because that way tech support has a better idea of what your error is.)
Now if you are getting a blue screen that says STOP and mentions a file being damaged or errors like "windows cannot start because c:\windows\system32\config\system or c:\windows\system32\config\software is missing, the resolution can be the same.
The first thing I would try is to remove any newly installed memory, or swap memory if possible. I got the stop error just after I put in 128, but then I took it out and I booted up without having to do anything.
Usually all the alternative boot options like safe mode, safe mode command prompt, or last known good configuration don't work, but there is no harm in trying them.
One problem is that most oem versions of windows xp do not come with an xp cd, the recovery console installed, or any kind of boot disk.
You need some kind of boot disk. Microsoft originally had a KB article specifically for the c:\windows\system32\config\system error that said any boot disk (even 98, or me).
The second problem is that most OEM version appear to be missing some of the backup copies of the registry hives that are supposed to be in the repair directory. Luckily software appears to be there in the cases I've seen, but system is not.
Boot to dos prompt or select repair option off XP cd.
Get to the c:\windows\system32\config directory.
Rename (Name of file, software or system) to .old
Change to Repair directory and copy the file (software or system) to C:\windows\system32\config\(software or system)
You don't have to do both, just the one that you are having problem with. The software version appears to load an earlier copy of the registry, but which copy is hard to tell. My user account is now Barbara.computer instead of just plain Barbara. I had to copy over most of the information from my profile to the new one.
The good news is that I was able to access my data. I was even able to copy over shortcuts from my old profile folder.
Now what caused me to get the error? I was in the middle of burning a cd and I got a stop error (because I had automatically reboot turned off already). I tried to burn the cd again and I got a different stop error. Then I rebooted and got the stop error about the windows\system32\config\software file was either damaged or missing.
I strongly recommend to backup data often until you are sure of the system's stability. I would also recommend that if you have a second physical drive or a second partition, that you save your data there, because then it is accessible if you reinstall windows in most cases.
Despite my bad experiences, if you are careful with backing up data (which you should be anyway), you turn off the automatically restart setting, and get familiar with the System Restore utility that is built into windows. As long as you can get into windows, it can undo changes that may have happened recently that may have caused a problem. If it doesn't fix the problem, you can undo the restore point. Your data and downloads are safe as long as they are in the My Documents folder.
Windows XP is more stable than and 95, 98, or ME version that has been out. The types of calls that I take at work have become more along the lines of "How To?" than problems with errors, crashing, etc.
Good Luck and Hope this Helps!
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
serena21
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Location: Cape Coral, FL
Reviews written: 226
Trusted by: 43 members
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