How to: Repair Windows XP/2000 if you are unable to boot into Windows

How to: Repair Windows XP/2000 if you are unable to boot into Windows OR How to perform an "in place upgrade" or system repair:

Is your system unable to boot into Windows XP/2000 or even Safe Mode? Whether you get a blue screen or XP/2000 just hangs, then this information is for you. This will allow you to repair your Windows XP/2000 installation (hopefully) without having to losing your data or settings.

This will help you to:

- Load Windows properly if there are critical driver, software or registry problems which have rendered the system unbootable. (Blue screens, hanging, errors etc..)
- Repair/reinstall missing Windows components or solve otherwise quirky behavior.
- Install a drive on another system or motherboard with different chipset.

This information will also allow you to install new motherboards or make other large hardware changes that XP may not readily accept with PnP.

Note: The system repair function will remove any updates you have previously installed that are not included on the CD. Drivers will also be reverted to their original XP versions, as well as some settings (network & performance settings may sometimes be reset to their defaults). It may be necessary to reactivate your Windows XP as well.

Step 1: Determine the problem

First, figure out what CAUSED the problem. Often times, when Windows is rendered unbootable, there is a good reason. This can often be due to hardware failure (bad hard disk, memory or CPU for example). In these cases, the system repair function will not work. System repair will only repair your software.

It is strongly recommended that you run a disk utility on your hard drive before performing a system repair.

Step 2: Begin the repair process

You must boot from your XP or 2000 CD. Please make sure it is the same version of Windows that is currently installed on your computer (ex. XP Home cannot upgrade XP Professional). Place the CD in your CDROM and start your computer. Newer versions will work as well (ie. Windows XP Pro SP1 CD will work on an older WinXP Pro non-SP1 installation)

Before the Windows logo appears, you will be asked to press any key to boot from CD, so do just that.

If you are unable to boot from the XP/2000 CD, then please check the last step in this short guide.

Step 3: System repair steps

A blue screen will appear and will begin loading XP setup from the CD.

RAID/SCSI/Unsupported UDMA users:
You will be prompted to "press F6 to install any third party SCSI or RAID drivers". Most users will not have to press F6, but if you are running RAID, SCSI or unsupported UDMA controllers, then you will have to have your controller drivers on a floppy disk. If you are unsure whether you have RAID/SCSI, then simply let the CD load without pressing F6.

Once completed, you will be confronted with "Windows Setup". You will be asked to setup up Windows, or repair Windows with the recovery console. Choose the FIRST option, NOT recovery console.

Choose F8 to continue.

Next, Windows Setup will find existing Windows XP/2000 installations. You will be asked to repair an existing XP installation or install a fresh copy of Windows XP/2000.

If no installations are found, then you will not be given the option to repair. This may happen if the data or partition on your drive is too corrupted.

That should be it. Windows XP/2000 will appear to be installing itself for the first time, but it will retain all of your data and settings. Just follow the prompts, have your CD-KEY handy and hope for the best!

If you are unable to boot from the XP/2000 CD see this: [last step]

Many computers out there are not configured to boot from the CDROM. If you cannot boot from the CDROM, this is probably due to the boot order of your computer being incorrect for CDROM booting.

You have two options:

1.) You can change this in the BIOS, which is usually the very first screen displayed by your computer when you turn it on.

2.) Many newer computers have a selectable boot menu by tapping F12 right after the first POST screen. This will allow you to temporarily boot from a CDROM.

To enter your BIOS, most users here will press the DEL key on POST

When you enter the BIOS setup, you need to change the boot order. The CDROM should be setup before the Hard Drive. Each BIOS is different, but here is an example:

Once you are able to boot up using cd, follow the normal process as above..