[Oldcomputerguy]

I have a large Windows XP system. Had UnBlue Reg Booster for years. I don't know if it helped but it didn't hurt. Two days ago I bought UB Driver Scanner. It said I had 8 out of date drivers. I let it download the fixes and install the first one. It then said I had to reboot. When it came back up the screen was in low res. with icons covering the whole screen. And the mouse and keyboard were dead. Had to manually power off. Retries got same result. Contacted UnBlue. They have NO live or phone help other than a chat guy who knows nothing. I needed this system desperatly so I tried to do a repair re-install of windows. It got up to the point of installing the product catalogs and came up with a Fatal Error. And the mouse and keyboard are again dead. Now it will not get past that point.
I was at SP3 but the cd is SP2. Now I think I have half and half. The F8 option wont let me get to dos because it has to apparently have some windows files available to do that. The Dell f12 gets me to a command prompt but other than a dir, I can't get to c: because of "Access Denied". Any suggestions? I could re-do the whole disk but 3 months of work would be lost. Apparently Acronis TI was failing to make backups every night and did not give me any messages. Of coarse I didn't go check the logs on my own. I also did not bother to record which driver was being updated when it crashed.

This post has been edited by Oldcomputerguy: 07 June 2012 - 12:41 PM

[LiveBrianD]

Uniblue stuff is generally crap. It sounds like the program updated your driver program, but the screen resolution got reset, and perhaps it messed up the USB driver. When you reinstalled, what do you mean by product catalogs? For what, Windows? Or did you install Uniblue's software again?

Once you install XP SP2, you can install SP3 via Windows Update.

To recover your files (if you didn't format the hard drive), use a linux liveCD, like Ubuntu. If you did, use Recuva, and see this. (note: the more you use the system, the higher the chance that your files have been overwritten)

This post has been edited by LiveBrianD: 07 June 2012 - 01:00 PM

[Oldcomputerguy]

LiveBrianD, on 07 June 2012 - 12:59 PM, said:

Uniblue stuff is generally crap. It sounds like the program updated your driver program, but the screen resolution got reset, and perhaps it messed up the USB driver. When you reinstalled, what do you mean by product catalogs? For what, Windows? Or did you install Uniblue's software again?

Once you install XP SP2, you can install SP3 via Windows Update.

To recover your files (if you didn't format the hard drive), use a linux liveCD, like Ubuntu. If you did, use Recuva, and see this. (note: the more you use the system, the higher the chance that your files have been overwritten)

The error pops up during the windows install. I have no idea what the "product catalogs" are but apparently windows needs them. The pop-up has the following:
Window name = Fatal Error
Msg: An error has been encountered that prevents Setup From continuing.

Setup failed to install the product catalogs. This is a fatal error. The setup log files should contain more information.

Press OK to view the Setup log file. (and then it has an OK Button)

(but I can NOT press OK because the mouse and the keyboard are both dead. As a matter of fact, the mouse and keyboard were dead from the point that I exited the f8 utility, and had the black screen while windows is starting.)

utilities. The mouse cursor was in the exact middle of the screen and would not move.)

[LiveBrianD]

Either this is a hardware issue, or perhaps your Windows disc is corrupted. I happen to have some ISOs of XP uploaded online (no license keys, you need to use the one on the side of your PC) here: https://skydrive.liv...255851B37%21155 Try that (the appropriate OEM version), and see if it works.

[Oldcomputerguy]

LiveBrianD, on 07 June 2012 - 02:22 PM, said:

Either this is a hardware issue, or perhaps your Windows disc is corrupted. I happen to have some ISOs of XP uploaded online (no license keys, you need to use the one on the side of your PC) here: https://skydrive.liv...255851B37%21155 Try that (the appropriate OEM version), and see if it works.

I really doubt hardware, because kbd and mouse work fine till windows gets started. It acts like a usb driver that is in windows and hasn't been overwritten yet at the point it hangs in the install. I have run all hardware tests available in the bios, and checkdisk. I am in the process of downloading ubuntu on my wife's laptop. It only has wifi connection to my router so its kind of slow. I have to try to get my important files off the disk before I mess with windows anymore. I really do appreciate your help and time.

[LiveBrianD]

Yeah, it sounds like an issue with Windows. Are you using a USB keyboard and mouse? (those tend to be more prone to driver issues than PS/2 ones, though I've never actually had an issue with them myself. Just avoid uninstalling the USB controller and you're fine. )

[Oldcomputerguy]

LiveBrianD, on 07 June 2012 - 03:34 PM, said:

Yeah, it sounds like an issue with Windows. Are you using a USB keyboard and mouse? (those tend to be more prone to driver issues than PS/2 ones, though I've never actually had an issue with them myself. Just avoid uninstalling the USB controller and you're fine. )

Yes, the mouse and keyboard are USB. I could understand mouse and keyboard but the file transfer error from the cd to the disk has me stumped. They are both internal SATA. Unless registry got corrupted. I don't know what the windows install program uses, if its partly the old registry or if it creates a completely new one. Since I have only tried a re-install, my thinking is that it may just work with the old one. I have 3 400gig USB drives to copy stuff to so when I finally get all of the ubuntu fill downloaded (at abt 90%) and create the cd I hope to save all the files I made in the last 3 months. My internal drives are 200gig and I am very soon going to try to find a good mirroring program that will keep a real time backup of the primary on the second drive. Do you know of any?

[LiveBrianD]

If you want to mirror the drives, use RAID 1. (that's at the sata controller level usually - you have to enable the ROM for that in the BIOS) Hopefully you haven't formatted the hard drive yet.

This post has been edited by LiveBrianD: 07 June 2012 - 04:47 PM

[Oldcomputerguy]

LiveBrianD, on 07 June 2012 - 04:47 PM, said:

If you want to mirror the drives, use RAID 1. (that's at the sata controller level usually - you have to enable the ROM for that in the BIOS) Hopefully you haven't formatted the hard drive yet.

No I have not formatted the hard drive. My only concern would be if an update like this were to corrupt the primary disk, the secondary would be corrupted also. If I had been monitoring the logs on Acronis True Image, and fixed whatever the problem was that caused the nightly backups to fail, this would be an easy fix. Now I have a nightmare. The Ubuntu program is loading on the Dell system from the cd but I am having great difficulty with the display. I think the display driver has some compatability problems. The icons on the left, and the bar across the top seem right, but the main workspace gets all jumbled up. The windows get overlayed but only parts of the window with big blocks missing and some of the background showing thru. If I move or drag something it leaves trails across the screen. I try to get to the "System Settings" by clicking or dragging but never see a system setting window. Part of the window on the main workspace flashes a few times but the settings window does not show up. It is impossible to work with as it is and I don't know how to make it better. This is a desktop that I am not familiar with and I don't know how its supposed to work. Learning it with this display problem is impossible.

[LiveBrianD]

Fyi, when you enable RAID, you end up formatting both drives.

In Ubuntu, you should be able to open the file manager from the bar on the left. I'm not home at the moment (I'm typing this on my laptop), but I'll make a little tutorial video on this for you when I get home.

[Oldcomputerguy]

Before you do that, let me tell you that I purchaced a program called Power Suite 2012 from Spotmau, and it seems to be doing what I need. I have almost finished backing up all files on the c: drive to one of my USB drives. The next step will be to format and do a full install of windows on the drive. Then all I have to do is copy the important stuff back and get all the windows updates. There is light at the end of this long tunnel. Thank you again for your time and help!

[LiveBrianD]

Good to know! If you are unable to get your Windows disc to work, again, try the disc images I posted above. https://skydrive.liv...255851B37%21155 (you need a tool like ImgBurn to burn them to a CD. Also, Win7 and OS X have one built in.)