Alright folks, I hope someone can offer some advice in here because I haven't been able to find something on the net.
I have winXP and tried to install Win7 on a separate drive for dual boot. Everything went well until the end (system rebooted a couple of times to complete installation) and as I was booting into 7 I got an "installation failed" message and an auto-reboot. After that nothing would load, the system would stop before the boot options menu.
So I unplugged the hard disk that 7 was installed and tried to log on to XP. To no avail so had to put in the XP dvd and run a winxp repair. After it repaired it the system booted ok. However once I got into windows I noticed that there were no updates (I was with the vanilla XP SP2) installed as the repair had cleared everything. So I downloaded the updates and tried to install them. There the problems started, I couldn't even get the windows 3.1 installer to actually install as at the end of the installation it would pop an error and rollback+reboot.
I google'd around and found some suggestions on how to unreg and rereg the dll modules in system32, and I did. That solved quite a lot of problems, allowed me to install the windows installer and a lot of updates. However I still cannot install SP3 and office updates. I also have a problem with msi*.dll as it messes around other software installation (e.g. my ATI drivers - can't update them nor can I uninstall them as I get an msi*.dll error). It's a pain to know that the system doesn't work properly and I need to figure out a way to fix it.
I've checked the MS website (obviously) but found no working solution - tried the suggestions but it has not solved my problem. Is there anything I can do to sort this out? How would reinstalling winxp (not repair but a full reinstall) affect my currently installed apps? (assuming I don't reformat partitions but just install over the previous XP version).
Cheers for anyone who managed to read this wall of text!
I have winXP and tried to install Win7 on a separate drive for dual boot. Everything went well until the end (system rebooted a couple of times to complete installation) and as I was booting into 7 I got an "installation failed" message and an auto-reboot. After that nothing would load, the system would stop before the boot options menu.
So I unplugged the hard disk that 7 was installed and tried to log on to XP. To no avail so had to put in the XP dvd and run a winxp repair. After it repaired it the system booted ok. However once I got into windows I noticed that there were no updates (I was with the vanilla XP SP2) installed as the repair had cleared everything. So I downloaded the updates and tried to install them. There the problems started, I couldn't even get the windows 3.1 installer to actually install as at the end of the installation it would pop an error and rollback+reboot.
I google'd around and found some suggestions on how to unreg and rereg the dll modules in system32, and I did. That solved quite a lot of problems, allowed me to install the windows installer and a lot of updates. However I still cannot install SP3 and office updates. I also have a problem with msi*.dll as it messes around other software installation (e.g. my ATI drivers - can't update them nor can I uninstall them as I get an msi*.dll error). It's a pain to know that the system doesn't work properly and I need to figure out a way to fix it.
I've checked the MS website (obviously) but found no working solution - tried the suggestions but it has not solved my problem. Is there anything I can do to sort this out? How would reinstalling winxp (not repair but a full reinstall) affect my currently installed apps? (assuming I don't reformat partitions but just install over the previous XP version).
Cheers for anyone who managed to read this wall of text!
