XP Home

[hawkida]

I have a computer that went screwy after the last XP update. It no longer boots, not even in safe mode (It constantly cycles after blue screening so fast I can't read the error, or in safe mode it gets stuck after loading "mup.sys" and does nothing). So I want to boot it from a CD and tell it to do a repair. Except I don't actually have an XP disk. I do have a legit XP serial for the machine and I was under the impression that I could download the software legally from Microsoft themselves. Well, if I can, they're making it bloody difficult to work out how. Best I can find is some version that's suitable for putting on floppy disks. Am I wrong? Do I have to search my entire house in the hope of finding an XP disk, or go down the dodgy torrents route? Or am I just failing to see something that's right under my nose?

Comments

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

Cheers Si. It could well be that - the symptoms look the same. It happened last Friday, but it may just have been that I'd put off the update in between times. I hadn't switched off the auto-updates and it was nagging me that there was new stuff to install. I'd been telling it to wait, but then I left the machine on and unattended for a bit and heard it rebooting and now rebooting is pretty much ALL it will do.

Annoyingly I know I HAVE an untouched XP Home CD somewhere that I found the other week and went "huh, that could be useful sometime, I'll put it away safely"...

[tadeous.livejournal.com]

Any XP disc should get you to the recovery console.

You would need the same edition for the automatic repair/recovery stuff.

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

If you could bring one along on Tuesday then, that'd be really helpful. Thanks.

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

I managed to find a disk at home this evening.

Sadly, it's helping about as much as a coaster might. I can't boot even from the disk - although at least it's possible to read the error message on the blue screen going down that route. Seems the hard drive has been killed. I bought it as a refurb off ebay, I'm trying to get my money back... Bah. Thanks for the pointers though.

[tadeous.livejournal.com]

Nuts.

Have you got another drive?

Fingers crossed for the refund.

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

No laptop sized drives, and I'm reluctant to open it up before I know for sure I'm lumbered with it. I understand Paypal tends to come down on the side of buyers if there are problems, so I'm fairly confident of getting my money back, although it'll probably take a while. And then I'll go to a proper shop and buy a normal laptop.