Windows is misbehavin'. Help meh! Created 17 years ago2006-07-27 17:19:08 UTC by srry

Yesterday, I was unfortunate enough to have Windows stop working for me. It refused to boot up in any way other than Safe Mode, and I had no idea what to do. At that point, I called upon the help of Penguinboy in the ShoutBOX, and he suggested that I do a repair installation.

Well, following through with his suggestion, I attempted a repair installation, but it hardly solved all my problems like I was hoping. Instead, when it got to the part in the Windows installation where it says "installing devices", it pretty much stopped doing anything. That is to say, it was stuck at "setup will complete in approximately 34 minutes" for about 12 hours. A couple hours ago, it just changed to saying it'll complete in 33 minutes, but nothing has happened since then. The hard drive light is off, and the Windows CD isn't spinning any.

So what do I do now? Restart the computer and try again? I'm afraid if I do that, I'll just run into more problems than I had before, as I've heard that bad things can happen from restarting during the Windows install process.

Help?

Format

You've got to be kidding me. In fact, I'm pretty sure you are kidding me.

Does sound pretty hugely buggered. Nothing intentionally changed recently?

Well, I got a new hard drive recently. Oh, and I updated a pirated copy of Microsoft Office through Windows Update, which was pretty much the last thing I did before I restarted my computer.

Odd. Well, I personally would restart the thing and see what happens. You might want to wait for more opinions, though.

I'm not so bothered by having to reinstall Windows, but I'm pretty damn worried about all my data. I've backed up much of it, but there's still a lot of stuff that I had just created before it happened (like some really awesome textures ).

EDIT:

Come on, people! I need some opinions on this!

You could download and burn a linux bootable cd, and then copy all your data to another drive.

I have a Knoppix CD, but that would mean restarting the computer. I guess there's really no way around that though, is there?

i've actually had this happen before.
yes, it is safe to try again.
firstly you should do the repair again, and if for some reason you cant, or it freezes again, try booting from the knoppix cd.
if that doesnt work, check your RAM. it may be corrupt.
else, backup your files from knoppix and format using FIPS (or similar) or even just through the xp cd
(boot from cd -> press enter -> agree -> select partition -> choose NTFS (quick), and wait)

Take out the harddrive and use another computer to copy across all the data that you want or need to another harddrive or CD/DVD/Flash drive. Once your info is safe replace the harddrive, reformat it and reinstall Windows.

or if you have 2 partitions or HDD's, just install windows onto the other drive and format the drive from there, after copying your files across.

Penguinboy: I already restarted my computer a LONG time ago, and tried doing the reinstall again, but it just hung up at 34 minutes like it did before. How long should I wait for that, anyway?

I've already spent a bunch of time making these backup CD's in Knoppix (what a pain), so I'll probably just format it. I know I'm probably not going to be able to get all my stuff copied, I'll always forget something! Oh well...

P.S.

Is there any way to partition a hard drive from within Knoppix? I can't write to either of mine, since they're using this stupid NTFS file system.

Knoppix is usually your last bet for recovering data from an ntfs drive, ive done it before and its not pretty, but at least I didn't lose anything.

Knoppix can write to NTFS in the latest version but why would you want to? It sounds like everythings buggered, I'd save what you can and format then buy a backup drive and hit yourself over the head for not doing daily backups before. If you dont backup eventually you will lose all your data, I'm amazed people can be so complacent about this point.

use the windows repair console on the disk, log on as admin, then repair with the '/f' ending to fix the errors.