Desperate for help!

[hhheather]

Yesterday, I decided to "reformat" my computer by re-installing Windows XP overtop of Windows XP.

Today, I reinstalled my ethernet drivers and did my Windows updates. When I restarted the computer to complete the updates, a blue screen came up that said I had to restart with safe mode and fix my registry or something. I went into safe mode and tried to find something that might help me but I couldn't find anything so I turned off my computer. Later, I try to get back into safe mode and it will not load. It stops loading after a while and just freezes. I have tried all the boot options like safe mode with networking, etc, and nothing will come up. Someone please tell me my computer isn't doomed!!

[ghost2003]

If you reinstalled windows over the top then it wasnt reformated.
Why did you reinstall? Were you haing problems with it? When if freezes while booting does it give an error message or does it just stop?
It sounds a bit like a harddrive going bad to me.

[hhheather]

I have freinds who reinstall windows for a fresh start often so I decided I needed a fresh start. It just stops when booting. It loads about 6 lines of the .dll files and then stops. When you try to start windows normally, it doesn't do anything, it just goes black. I'm pretty sure I'm missing registry files. I need a way to reload windows again or reload registry files without having to go into safe mode, if it's possible.

[SONOFLIBERTY]

If You Want To Reinstall The Os You Need To Reformat The Hard Drive, What You Did Causes A Lot Of An Explain Problem. Reformating The Hard Drive Will Install The Os Easy Since You Want To Have A Reinstall, By Saying This Im Assuming You Back Up All Your Files.

[rspassey]

Here is what you can try :

Enter BIOS and set it to boot from CD ROM

Put in your XP cd

Boot and enter XP installation

When asked to choose a partition > Delete all that are there and allocate a new one (which should be your entire drive)

Follow through with formatting the drive as NTFS

Finish installation of XP

[hhheather]

Thanks so much, I'll try that last one.

If I have files on my pc, will they be deleted? If so, is there a way to preserve them?

Thanks for all the help.

[rspassey]

Yes, a reformat will delete ALL your files... if you can get into safe mode or back onto windows again, you can copy them over to an external harddrive to keep the back up.

[hhheather]

Woe is me, I don't think I will be getting back into safe mode. I tried loading my XP cd from the BIOS menu and it started to load but it came to a file called usbehci.sys and it said it was corrupted. Any ideas as to why that is?

[rjfvillarosa]

How important are the files on your hard drive that you wish to keep?
By trying to install XP on top of the original installation you have damaged the original installation probably beyond repair and a full format and reinstall is most likely your only course of action.

[hhheather]

I don't think my mother would talk to me if I lost her files haha. I managed to save my own. Thanks so much for all your help, I think I'm going to get my aunt to run disk doctor on it or something.

[rjfvillarosa]

It is quite easy to put the hard drive from your machine into another machine as a slave drive, then recover all the files and save them to a disk or the master hard drive of the second machine.

[glc]

You may have failing hardware. I'd get that hard drive out into an external housing or another machine and save the files before doing anything else. Then I'd run hardware diagnostics - hard drive and ram being the 2 prime suspects.