Repair problem: reinstall taking a very long time

[royw]

ruirib, thanks but before I try that would you mind looking at the attached screenshot and letting me know if you have any other comments:

EaseUS Partition Master.png

Regarding the unallocated space on C am I right in thinking that I have to create a partion before I can use the merge function?

[royw]

ruirib,

Further to my previous post, the screenshot shows disk D as the boot disk. How do I change the boot disk to C?

[ruirib]

Seems you do have more than one partition, Roy. That explains why you have the two boot options and why you can still go back to the "failed" reinstall attempt. I guess now it depends on what you want to do.

[royw]

ruirib,disk D is a separate internal hard drive. (Disk F is a usb external drive).In the light of this,I would appreciate your further comments on posts # 31 and 32.

[ruirib]

Roy,

My belief is that although you are booting from D, boot information resides on C, so you cannot simply remove C and replace it with D. Considering you are starting anew, I would wipe C and reinstall Windows XP there.

[royw]

ruirib, I formatted both internal hard drives, having taken up to date images first, and then did a clean reinstall of XP.(I think the problems previously were caused by the fact that when I did the repair install I thought it was being applied to the C drive, but it turned out to be the D drive. This time I made certain XP installed to the C drive).

Strangely, when I booted after the install completed I still got the options to booot into XP or XP again! However, when I used msconfig and looked at the boot options right clicking showed one was faulty and I was able to remove it.

I have now restored the data and all programs from the Macrium System images, and at last everything is working as it should.

Thanks for all your help throughout this thread.

Best regards,
Roy

[ruirib]

Glad you finally sorted it, Roy. Well done.