Open the Boot.ini which is located in the root of the C drive with
Notepad....remove the line that refers to the 2nd Installation of
XP.(windows2). .do this from the 1st installation...C:\windows
Then delete that whole directory.
Reboot with the XP CD...it should now only see the old installation.....and
do that "Repair" you originally had in mind...but this time be more
carefull.
peter
--
DISCLAIMER: If you find a posting or message from me
offensive, inappropriate, or disruptive, please ignore it.
If you don't know how to ignore a posting, complain to
me and I will be only too happy to demonstrate... ;-)
"pheasant" <pheasant@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:7CDF98BD-7BA2-4DBF-84EC-386E0FE09730@microsoft.com...
> I made a mess of a repair installation of XP Home I got an NTLDR fault),
> and
> managed to install a new, parallel copy of XP in a different folder on the
> same partition. What I meant to do was do a Repair install of course.
>
> When I accidentally added the new XP installation (instead of overwriting
> the old system), I could see the faulty Windows package sitting in its
> usual
> folder structure, so it is still there - in effect, I opted to install a
> parallel package, and checked the 'keep original files' option, so that's
> not
> surprising.
>
> Now I have a perfect installation (in c:\windows2) and a broken one, in
> c:\windows. Of course, all my software is registered to the old, faulty
> setup, and my new desktop is virtually empty ! It would be a daunting task
> to
> reinstall all my software; can anyone think of a simple way to fix the old
> XP
> installation ?
>
> I wondered whether I could run a Repair install on the old setup (as I
> should have done in the first place), then just delete the new one.
> However,
> Recovery Console can only 'see' the new, healthy installation, so I can't
> get
> at the old one to Repair it.
>
> I have a full incremental data backup (a mirror in fact - I wondered about
> just wiping the HD and restoring that, but it seems rather a large step
> !),
> so I don't think any data is at risk. It's the pain of reinstalling tons
> of
> software, pulling over huge e-mail folders, and reinstalling 10 devices !
>
> Chkdsk shows the HD is fine.
>
> In essence, my current problem is when I run an XP Home repair, the only
> Win
> installation the system can 'see' is the new, clean one; the original XP
> Home
> directory structure is still there, and the files (squillions of 'em) look
> fine to me - in effect, I have c:\windows and c:\windows2, both fully
> populated with all the necessary files (although there may be a few
> corrupted
> ones in the original setup), but the XP repair setup can't see the first
> of
> these.
>
> A thought - can XP be installed (or reinstalled) from itself - ie. within
> the files parked in the c:\windows directory ? There's a stack of exe
> files
> in there !
>
> Any thoughts ?
>
Linear Mode
