Huge problem - 2 windows xp's installed

[Radford]

Hi.

I was on the laptop last night doing some college work (using Windows XP). The laptop all of a sudden seemed to be running very slow. After a while it crashed and froze. I had to press the power button as there was no other way of turning it off.

I did this and when it loaded back up, it wouldn't come on. Instead it showed me a message saying 'out of physical memory' & other messages like 'out of range' & 'corrupted'.

I couldn't even get it back on, and i needed my college work. I decided to re-install windows xp. I did so, and when i was on the setup, it said would i like to overwrite the existing windows xp? and in brackets it said it might delete some documents and programs. I chose 'no' and decided to install it in another folder. I installed it in a new folder called C:\WINDOWS2.

No when i restarted the laptop after the installtion had completed it asked me what operating system i would like to run. There were 2 options. If i chose the top one, the new windows would load up and it would have saved my old program files folder and windows folder but i didn't have an internet connection or norton installed. If i chose the bottom option i would still get the blue error message.

I don't know what i have done, but i wondered if there was an option that i could get my old system running back to normal?

Should i format the laptop and then re-install windows xp?

Cheers, Chris.

[EzyStvy]

You installed a new copy of windows....

You can fix the bootup selection by going to Control Panel->System->Advanced tab->Startup and Recovery settings button. The quick and easy way is to change the "time delay" to 1 second. The longer harder way is to edit the boot.ini file that you'll see when going to the above mentioned location.

[wizzer]

basically you now got 2 operating systems (2 copies of xp)now installed on your computer. The new install you made would not have all the programs and device drivers loaded, nor the same settings ,that's why you are not seeing your internet and antivirus program and you may have to reinstall some of your programs to get them working...I've gotten that blue screen before. You should have tried to either repair your existing windows instead of creating a new one.

You can also use the recovery console to attempt to fix errors. Insert the windows setup up disk, let it load blah blah, then when the options come up to install enter "r" to start recovery console, it will display something like

Enter the OS you would like to repair:
1. C:\windows
2. C:\windows2

Enter the number " 1 "which I assume is your "old" non-working OS, then you'll get
command prompt
C:\windows
at prompt type " chkdsk/f "

the utility will run and attempt to fix errors and the computer will restart. Now try the boot the old OS and, keep your fingers crossed. If and after you get to this point and it works, then you can work on getting rid of the windows2