Looy wrote:

>I already had an image of the C: drive on CD (took 4 CDs). >>


Now I understand.  I thought you were trying to put it all on one CD.

Can you get into the Boot Menu at all?  If so, you might be able to try 
Command Only option and from there run "Format C:"   .

Reformatting the C-Drive and reinstalling XP might in the end be the 
quickest way out of the dilemma and at least you'd know that you had got 
rid of any Ghost remnants that might otherwise come back to haunt you later.

I think from memory you can also run the Format C: command direct from the 
XP disk, but I'm not sure about that.

There's always an inherent risk in running any software that autoloads 
before Windows.  If it goes wrong, and stalls before XP can load, as has 
happened here, you aren't left with too many repair options.

A dos boot floppy with an NTFS reader/writer would be a nice tool to have 
in your arsenal, but I'm not aware of any other than Sysinternals rather 
expensive version. All my old boot rescue floppies are useless on an NTFS 
partition---one advantage of sticking to the old FAT32 system.

I've often wondered whether it is worth while setting up a small FAT32 
partition and installing a 2nd copy of XP on that---in case of an emergency 
such as Loy is experiencing.  Then I would expect you'd be able to
run XP from the dos boot floppy----Yes?

But then you'd presumably still not be able to run any of your installed 
programs, as they'd be installed on the "other" XP registry. I don't know 
whether to would be possible to import the NTFS registry into the FAT32 
version---probably not.

So even if the exercise is possible, it might not in the end do you much good.

Any thoughts?

Don Penlington


 From the Beach at Surfers Paradise in sunny Queensland.
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