How to Rollback A Win XP Install

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SteveMmM

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Ok here is what is going on.

Currently trying to upgrade from Win XP Home to Win XP Pro.

Install Freezes in different places and will not complete.

Now it will not let me boot back into my old OS {Win XP Home}.Every time I boot it automatically goes back to try and complete the install. I tried f8 and it will not boot back into safe mode or restore last known good config. I assume the installer has changed my boot.ini files and is pointing to the install.

I tred running recovery console from the disk so I could edit the boot.ini files and take off the path pointing to the install but it freezes before I can even get to the section to press "r" for the console.

I also tried copying a boot.ini file to a Win XP start up disk but it will not let me from DOS copy the boot.ini file to the C: directory to overwrite the other. It says inalid directory. Infact I can not pull up any drive but the A: drive from DOS. Possibly because my drive is formated in NTFS?

Anyways the end result is is anyone knows of a way to stop the system from booting into the install and just boot back to the old OS that would be great. Or maybe I am just typing the copy command and need to be refreshed {A:copy boot.ini c:} and variations with the front and backslash.

Thank you all in advance for all your help.
 
it has already overwritten the old xp home files(unless u were upgrading to pro and installing to a different partition) so u will have to get it to finish the install or it wont run, i dont think its possible to boot back into the old one at this point and upgrades suck, u will have problems down the road for sure, get the data u want to keep off ur hdd to somewhere else, format, and do a clean install of pro would be my choice of action
 
RE:

Just to give an update. I finally just yanked the drive and put it into another pc as a secondary drive then edited the boot.ini file and changed it to boot back into the original OS (winxp home).

I should have just done this from the start. Sometimes we overlook the simplest things Doh!

Response to the above post:

If you are upgrading from Win 98-2000 to XP pro or home you can rollback the install fairly easily. It is just when upgrading from XP Home to XP Pro you can no longer boot into safe mode to rollback the install so you have to use the recovery console either from a boot disk or OS install CD and use the Recovery Consoles command line section and edit your boot.ini file to point to the original OS instead of the Upgrade Install files.

Thanks you all for trying!
 
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