Upgrade failure

[Carl Stockwell]

Hi
Hope this OS upgrade/installation isn't too far gone. My daughter has a
gateway laptop running ME. I had the drive upgraded and the old system
ported to the new drive. I purchased XP Home upgrade edition (she needs XP
to run her new ipod). With the new drive inplace i booted the machine and
ran ME and everything looked ok. I rebooted and got a screen with an option
to boot ME or XP Setup. Chose the setup option and for the next half hour
everything looked good. The machine boots fine but literally everything
(settings, programs, and some hardware) are gone. At this point she told me
that she had attempted to install XP (using someone else's disk) but the
installation was never completed. When I ran (what I thought was the
upgrade) it did complete but never asked for a product key. I think at this
point the safest thing to do is get rid of the XP installation (rather than
use the \windows default site, I had it install to \winxp folder. The is no
reference to uninstalling XP in the control panel\add & remove programs. I
went to the MS site and found KB308233 which details how to manually
uninstall XP from a command prompt. She booted to a command prompt, changed
to the \winxp\system32 folder and ran osuninst.exe but got an error message
that it could not uninstall XP because the necessary registration
information is missing.
I'm not sure how to proceed next to remove the XP installation (roll it back
to a valid ME edition). I have put in a call to my friend (who swapped the
drives and mirrored the old drive to the new) in the hope that the old drive
has not been reformatted. Any suggestions as to how to straighten this out?

Thanks
CarlS

[D.Currie]

"Carl Stockwell" > wrote in message
...
> Hi
> Hope this OS upgrade/installation isn't too far gone. My daughter has a
> gateway laptop running ME. I had the drive upgraded and the old system
> ported to the new drive. I purchased XP Home upgrade edition (she needs XP
> to run her new ipod). With the new drive inplace i booted the machine and
> ran ME and everything looked ok. I rebooted and got a screen with an
option
> to boot ME or XP Setup. Chose the setup option and for the next half hour
> everything looked good. The machine boots fine but literally everything
> (settings, programs, and some hardware) are gone. At this point she told
me
> that she had attempted to install XP (using someone else's disk) but the
> installation was never completed. When I ran (what I thought was the
> upgrade) it did complete but never asked for a product key. I think at
this
> point the safest thing to do is get rid of the XP installation (rather
than
> use the \windows default site, I had it install to \winxp folder. The is
no
> reference to uninstalling XP in the control panel\add & remove programs. I
> went to the MS site and found KB308233 which details how to manually
> uninstall XP from a command prompt. She booted to a command prompt,
changed
> to the \winxp\system32 folder and ran osuninst.exe but got an error
message
> that it could not uninstall XP because the necessary registration
> information is missing.
> I'm not sure how to proceed next to remove the XP installation (roll it
back
> to a valid ME edition). I have put in a call to my friend (who swapped the
> drives and mirrored the old drive to the new) in the hope that the old
drive
> has not been reformatted. Any suggestions as to how to straighten this
out?
>
> Thanks
> CarlS
>
>
If you had it install to winxp, you weren't in the process of doing an
upgrade, you were installing a fresh os to a different folder, probably in
the same partition, right? You've probably messed up the ME install by doing
that, and I have no guess as to why your XP install went bad, but if you
started with one version, then tried to continue with another...well, you've
created a pretty big mess. And I'll be you didn't run the upgrade advisor
first, right?

If you aren't willing to format the drive and start over, you'd probably be
best off getting some on-site help. Trying to tell you what to do without
actually seeing what's going on is next to impossible.

[D.Currie]

"Carl S" > wrote in message
...
> Thanks for the reply.. I think this was doomed from the very start as she
neglected to tell me about the incomplete installation. It never went to or
accessed Upgrade Advisor.. just went straight to install XP. I'm looking at
retreiving her original 2GB drive, clearing out the new one and reinstalling
it. Anyway, thanks

For future reference, the Upgrade Advisor isn't something that runs
automatically. You can download it from MS before you buy a copy of XP, or
it's on the CD.
>