Is it possible to 'repair' Windows XP operating system without reformatting the hard disk?

Answer 1

Yeah, it's pretty easy. 1. Insert your original Windows XP CD. You still have the CD, right? 2. Restart your computer, and, when prompted, press any key to boot off the CD. 3. You'll get to a screen that talks about the recovery console. Skip that, and proceed like you're going to install windows again. Don't worry, you're not going to lose anything. 4. After the license agreement, you'll get a screen that lists the partitions on your hard drive. There should be only one. If there's more than one, choose the one that you know has windows on it, or choose the largest one. Then, if memory serves correct, you're to press enter to install windows to the partition (that's NOT what we want) or to press 'R' to repair. That's what we want. 5. Follow the rest of the directions.

An alternative is to, from inside of windows, go to Start, then Run, then type (no quotes) "sfc /scannow". That's the system file checker, it verifies all files and replaces any with errors.

Answer 2

Try this,

Windows XP Repair Installation

At some point you may need to repair the installation of
Windows XP. This is preferable to a clean install in many
cases since it attempts to only repair your copy of Windows
without having to delete all the files on your computer
first. In many cases a repair installation is enough to
fix the problem. A repair install deletes the files normally
installed by windows XP and then reinstalls them off the disc. A
repair install will not rebuild your computer's registry,
delete applications and user settings, or fix problems
caused being caused by a program.

1. First you have to boot the computer with the Windows
XP cd in the cd tray. You will see a black screen and
it will ask you to press any key to boot from the cd so
press the spacebar and your computer will boot from the CD.

2. After a moment you will be taken to the Windows XP Setup
screen. Though the second option says to repair do not
press R. Instead press enter to select the setup for
Windows XP.

3. Next, you have to accept the license agreement from Windows.
Once you've done that it will search for your existing
installation of Windows.

4. Once it has finished detecting the installation you need
to select the XP installation you want to repair. You can
repair the installation by pressing R. If you don't see
the repair option you will need to do a clean installation.
Your version of windows may have been damaged in a way that
it cannot carry out a repair.

5. Setup will then copy the files it needs to the hard drive
and reboot the computer. A message will come up asking you
if you want to boot from the cd, don't press any keys and
just let the timer run out. The set up will continue and
look like is doing a clean install but all of your applications
and settings will be intact when it finished.

An important note is to not activate your windows over the
internet right away. Always enable the XP firewall to protect
yourself.

http://cs.its.uiowa.edu/wts/valid.asp

Have fun and be safe.

Answer 3

i've got been given some undesirable information for you. i'm prepared to guess you have a greater moderen pc with a SATA diskcontinual. unique winxp would not have sata drivers on it..that's why it wont understand your disk whilst the bios does. i'm additionally prepared to guess you dont have a floppycontinual to grant it the drivers it desires for the period of startup. only decision left from right here is to apply a software called nLite to create a winxp deploy cd with the sata drivers outfitted in. i've got had to do it, its no longer tooo complicated. as quickly as you have the cd outfitted, boot on it and choose restoration console on the dos on the spot chkdsk c: /r which will restoration the disk and can enable it boot up often after that.

Answer 4

if you have a windows XP CD, then you can repair it.
If you can login to Windows, you can do a Windows Recovery
if you can't log in an d have no XP CD, then you need to reformat it.

Answer 5

Sure it is but dont jump on an answer here and assume its the first thing to do! Post your systems problems and you mite find an easy fix! If you follow the above advice you may lose many files that are valuable to you! The above is a last resort!

Answer 6

1)insert win xp cd
2)choose checkup sustem compability.
3)that will automatically repair ur x p.
in unable download xp repair tool from
www.torrentspy.com/latest.asp

Answer 7

yes restore. using your XP CD.

Answer 8

restore

Answer 9

Wat he said