Windows XP Installation Problems

[dafoe]

About a year ago, against my advice, my mother bought one of those POS PCs at Wal Mart- Balance brand. After about a month, the power supply went. Long story, but I had to put the Micro ATX into a ATX case.

Anyway, she wanted to install a second hard drive. I was busy. So some idiot at her work offered to put it in. Using the MAX Blast Software he was able to format the drive that had Windows XP on it- not the new drive. Why is this even possible?!

I don't have XP. I'm still using 2000 Pro. I installed it on the new drive. Then I used a data recovery tool to pull everything off the old drive.

Here's the problem: XP was pre-loaded. Either she never had a backup or she lost it. I have all the Windows files on the new drive, including the .exe (I'm assuming). But I don't want to re-install XP. I want to restore it. So that all the saved password, settings, etc. are exactly the same as before.

Is this possible? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[jameshgross]

On most of these types of systems the original disk image is stored on a separate partition.
Holding down the F10 key during the diagnostic bootup will usually bring up the recovery console. Or else boot from the Windows recovery disk if one was made.

[sp8rt1cus]

When you put in Windows 2000 it became the boot wiping everything from the XP operating system. You will be very lucky if you can find anything. Rule of thumb you move up in OS not down.

[ahhaa]

If you get one of the Live CD versions of Linux like Knoppix or Puppy they will run in RAM from a CD without installinging- but the main thing is they will read/write NTFS, so you can find anything that's still on the drive- tho I doubt you're gonna be happy...

MajorGeeks have a bunch of gray area tools; say no more.

If it were me, I'd tell ma to get the goofball at work to chip in and just get an XPsp2 upgrade disk. Googling 'XP upgrade' I see prices as low as $69; but caveat emptor.