restoring without restoring

[milkman4_hi_r]

i talked to the people that made my computer and they said that i could repair my windows by doing a restore, but not completely restoreing the system. i have alot of info that i cant really backup so this was apealing to me. i know i can do this with win 98 on my old pc but on this one(xp) all i get is 2 options when i put the disc in and restart. i can reinstall win or go to a command prompt and reinstall. the guy i talked to said that i should go to restore win and then i would have the option to restore or repair but i dont have that option, well i might not have gotten there becouse after i hit restore it asked if i was sure i wanted to do that and said that if i did it would put my comp back to the way it was when i bought it. i dont want to reinstall my windows completely, but i keep getting this error saying : (the instruction at "0x77f52b58" referenced memory at "0xfffffffe" the memory cannot be read. click ok to terminate) i get this message every so often. im finding that my cimouter "refreshes" and everything but the background pic disapears then comes back. now this used to happen on my old 98 pc but it seemed normal. on this computer it doesnt seem right. its pretty long for it to refresh and it happens quite frequently. alot when i go to the start menu and then it just happens after i click start. im not sure if this is linked to the error message i get. oh the message pops up mostly when im trying to open an app or something but when i hit ok it refreshes the computer. hmmm? dont know. can anyone help me?

[Markoman01027]

Download RAM tester from http://www.docmemory.com and run a test on your RAM.

[not important]

Insert your Windows XP compact disc (CD) into your CD-ROM drive or DVD-ROM drive, and then restart your computer.

When the "Press any key to boot from CD" message is displayed on your screen, press a key to start your computer from the Windows XP CD.

When you see the following message displayed on the Welcome to Setup screen, press ENTER:

To setup Windows XP now, press ENTER.

At this point an option to press R to enter the Recovery Console is displayed. Do not select this option.

On the Windows XP Licensing Agreement screen, press F8 to agree to the license agreement.

Make sure that your current installation of Windows XP is selected in the box, and then press the R key to repair Windows XP.

[milkman4_hi_r]

ok i did the ram checking thing and my ram is fine, so that thing says. with my disc i put it in and restart and i get 2 options. 1 is to and i quote "restore windows xp" numba 2 isrestore from command prompt or something. im obviously too stupid to do anything through a command prompt so i steer clear of it. so i select option 1. then it does something and says to cont. press any key. so i do and then it says that to cont. press y and to abort press n. well i have 2 cds for my xp os. one has drivers on it or something and the other is the main one used to start restoring windows. i tried it with the cd with the drivers and after i select y (yes) it goes to a screen that almost looks like a windows window, and it says simtel systems or something at the top. now with cd 2, the one with the drivers, i get error messages saying that this file wasnt found press ok then this file wasnt found hit ok. whatever, its couse the files are on disc 1, BUT if i did have cd 1 in there it would have started to reinstall my windows, right? im afraid to do this becouse i havent backed up my files. i cant afford to lose all the info on a guess. i reinstalled my os once already but i cant remember what it does when reinstalling. i just had my comp crash really bad so im thinkin my problem is getting worse. plz help. thanx for your suggestions.

[Confused]

Repair is simply reinstalling portions of the OS to fix broken links, missing files and such. It has to do it from the CD that contains the OS not the drivers.

With that said you need to wait for one of the more experienced members to reply. While I've done the repair I only have a XP CD. I'm curious why you have 2 CD's with one being drivers. Do you have a actual XP CD or a restore CD. If restore I'm sure how that works.
Chas

[reboot]

You don't have a standard XP disk, you have a "recovery disk", provided by the computer mfg. Must be a Compaq, PB, HP, or somesuch. Without a standard XP disk, you can't do a "repair install".

[Confused]

Thanks for kincking in Jim. That is what I thought but wasn't sure enought to bet the house.
Chas

[milkman4_hi_r]

yea i have a mfg. disc but the guy i talked to with tech support for my comp said that i could do a repair and it wouldnt completely restore my os, but im not too sure of how much i trust that guy though becouse he didnt ask me too much about what i have and didnt seem too smart becouse, like always, he asked me to restore my pc to an earlier date then reinstall windows completely. they always say to do that, its like their quick fix to every problem, but i told him that i didnt want to do all that and after talking to him for like an hour and trying to get some actual info out of him, he said that i could repair without reinstalling. i have a hp mfg. cd for my old 98win and you can repair with those discs why cant i do it with my xp one?

[reboot]

Who made the computer?
Browse the CD, and see if there's a "i386" or a "cabs" folder on it somewhere.
If there is, you may be in luck, if there isn't, he's full of bullshirt.
If you do find a folder on the CD with a whole bunch of .cab files let us know their names, and just maybe we can get it to work.

[milkman4_hi_r]

i couldnt find any of those files. but there are a lot of unpackers and installers. they could be in there. there are only about 5 objects on either cd. a couple foulders with sub folders and a windows icon. if i wanted to backup my xp cd would i just copy the files to another disc or is there something special i have to do?

[milkman4_hi_r]

oh emachines made my pc

[reboot]

Emachines usually has three options when you boot to CD.
1, is a complete format, reinstall.
2, is a fresh install over top.
3, view help files.
Try option 2 (if it's there), otherwise, you can use a tool like Winzip to view what's in the largest of the objects on the disk.
Give us some folder names, and filenames, and sizes if you can, maybe we can manually extract what you need.

[milkman4_hi_r]

theres a file thats t2200.gho my model is a t2200 so im figuring its the main file for my win. its size is 655,357kb and my computer doesnt have a program to open it from win. then theres a win icon and an autorun file. thats disc 1. the one that is needed to reinstall windows. i only have 2 options when i boot from cd. 1 is to reinstall windows from cd and 2 is to reinstall from a comand promt. i guess i can choose different things through there but im not real sure about command prompt. the second cd is just drivers for everything from my modem to whatever else.

[reboot]

The .gho file, is a Norton Ghost image file. Everything you need is in that file, but to get it out, you need Ghost.
I think your best option is to get a normal XP CD, format your drive, and install it. You can get all the drivers and stuff off the second CD.

[milkman4_hi_r]

my friend has a xp pro cd could i use that and not lose my files? i have xp home

[reboot]

Maybe. If...I can't really get into that discussion, because it's not legal to use his copy.

[milkman4_hi_r]

well hypatheticaly. i dont really have a friend so he couldnt posibly have the cd. sorry i wasnt clearer. i was trying to type fast

[reboot]

You could install XP Pro over XP home, but I'm not sure the COA key would work. You might have to use your "friend's" COA key, and then you wouldn't be able to activate Windows, and you'd end up having to format and reinstall every 30 days.