How to Repair Windows XP Without Formatting Your PC
When our system encounters an error we normally opt to choose to just format our disk and prepare another clean installation of Windows and all of our programs. But engaging to that process of bringing Windows back to life is a pain especially for beginners. But did you know that just repairing your Windows can spare you to those agony. You don’t have to worry about anything it will not wipe anything on your computer like formatting will.
When I diagnose a computer problem formatting has always been my last option. There are still lots of things to do to repair it without the need of formatting your disk. If you suspect that there is a problem with your Windows system files you can simply try to repair it before resorting to formatting.
Here is the step by step instruction to repair your Windows XP installation without formatting your PC.
1. First, insert your bootable Windows XP in your CD/DVD drive.
2. Restart your computer
3. When it ask you to press any key to boot from CD, Press any key on your keyboard. Proceed to step 6.
4. If it doesn’t ask you, then restart your computer again.
5. Go to the BIOS settings of your computer, usually by pressing the delete key or F1, F2, F10 function keys, varies from different computers. Once inside the bios, you need to change the boot options. Change the primary boot option to CDRom. Save and exit.
6. A Blue screen will appear… just like the one you see below.
7. Choose “To setup Windows XP now, press ENTER” Do not choose to Repair yet.
8. It will then display your existing Windows XP copy. Make sure that is selected like you see below.
9. Choose to Repair the selected Windows XP installation by pressing the letter R key on your keyboard.
10. Your windows will run to it’s usual installation process, however, it is a lot quicker this time. But don’t panic it will not wipe your files, it will just repair your system.
11. At some point you will be ask to enter the serial number and restart the computer.
12. When it finishes the setup your files will still be there but the Windows errors you had will not.
Related posts:
- How to Start Windows in Safe Mode
- How to fix “Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt”
- How to Fix “NTLDR is Missing” Error
- How to install Windows XP on a SATA Hard Drive
- How to Delete undeletable file
- Signs that you might have a Windows Registry problem
- What To Do When You Encounter An Error Code On Your PC
- Repair A Broken Hard Disk – Hardware And Software Faults
- Online Computer Repair Specialists are Software Experts
- How to fix missing file WTSAPI32.DLL
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But repairing your compute not work all the time. Then you have only option to format, alternatively you ca put your all data in backup
You listed really useful instruction for repair option, it atleast relif us from formatting the disk
During my PC repair I saw a guy repairing windows XP system using repair command while the cd for windows xp is still inside the cd rom using some strong DOS commands. But after read this post i understand how it is possible thanks for this post.
Wow its great to know that we can repair window XP without formatting. Thanks for the information.
Great information on window XP repair. Keep the good work.
Thanks for a nice and informative site. Somehow I was drawn to reading the post and I enjoyed a lot. Have a nice day!
Its really a very informative post. Thanks for sharing such nice information here.
Best Transporter’s last blog post..Sweet memory
When your computer behaves in unexpected ways, there are two possible reasons. You may have a virus on your system, or your Windows installation has become corrupted and needs to be reinstalled. Avoid losing data and programs by using the install disk.
Do this in safe mode. To get to safe mode, restart your machine, keep tapping F8 until you get a list of boot options, pick Safe Mode.
Thanks for sharing this good informative post.
my mspaint .exe is missing. how can i restore it?
hope you can help me cause my daughter love to use paint but i dont want to reformat it again.
romz
download it here http://pcremix.com/mspaint.rar , copy it’s content to c:\windows\system32
[...] Follow these steps to boot into Windows XP Recovery Console [...]
Thank you so much for the tips! It worked and now I’m happily backing everything up in case this happens again or something worse happens.
When your computer is not working well, it really the difficult situation for me to how to remove this error with re-installing this window. The above tips are really worked well to repair the window.
you can also do so by selecting the partition and then it will ask to format(quick) or format or to keep the files intact.Select the 3rd one and it will put a fresh installation. Install xp and your files would be safe.
Wow! i didn’t know that it can be repaired without formatting it. thanks for sharing this.
My laptop will not boot properly, it’s stuck in an endless boot loop ending at the safe mode page. Hit any option on the safe mode page, and it reboots to the same page. I got into this mess by installing BitDefender Total Security 2012 on my Windows XP laptop.
So I got up to your step #7 and hit enter, but got the message “Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed on your computer”.
I tried hitting “R” but got the same result.
Any other ideas? Many thanks!
This looks like you have some issues with your sata controller. Try setting your SATA Controller to Compatibility.
1. Enter your BIOS.
2. Look for the Serial ATA or SATA configuration section (usually on ‘On Chip Config’)
3. Change the mode of the SATA controller to Compatibility
4. Save & Exit
5. Restart computer
Thank you for the tips – you saved my pc thanks!
Great tips my friend. I like your determination in fixing XP (it’s satisfying when you get it working again). I hate the way PC repair shop pretends to have tried to fix you PC when really they just format it and charge you a hefty fee for the pleasure!
Cheers
Your Welcome and Thanks