Repairing Windows problem

[KnightofBane]

Hello again.

I was doing a Windows repair with the instructions found at http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/How-to-repair-Windows-XP-t138.html this morning (long story short: I got a virus or something when I ran a file ((I scanned it and no viruses came up so)) and basically when I restarted my PC my taskbar was there but it was half-size and had no Start button). Anyway, everything was working fine until I got to the actual Windows installing screen.

About 30 seconds into the installing I get this error:

Fatal Error
An error has been encountered that prevents setup from continuing.
One of the components that Windows needs to continue setup could not be installed.
The operation was cancelled by the user. Press OK to view the setup log file

.

I click OK and I get a long list of stuff like this:

Fatal Error:
One of the components that Windows needs to continue setup could not be installed.

The operation was cancelled by the user.

And since it was during the installation I can't get to my actual computer until Windows is repaired.

Note: my cd is not scratched all and I've run this repair before.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

Probably not what you want to hear, and someone else might have a promising solution for you in time, but you're probably better off just extracting the data you need off that installation of XP and then perform a full reinstallation.

 

[KnightofBane]

I can't get the important stuff off my computer without accessing my desktop though, right? And since I can't access my desktop without repairing Windows...

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

Wrong.

You can take that HDD and attach it to another PC as a secondary/slave device and pull anything that you care to off the drive. You can also boot off a Linux LiveCD such as Knoppix and transfer the data from that HDD to another storage device.

 

[KnightofBane]

Eh, there's gotta be a way around this.

 

[DelJo63]

here's my approach;

1- recover the important data before doing anything that might cause a total failure
https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic76094.html

2- attempt to get system restore to get it running right again
https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic98544.html

3- give up, reformat and reinstall
(be sure you have all your OEM drivers available)