I tried upgrading XPSP1 with XPSP2 CD. After restart the Win load failed at the logo with blue bar. A safe mode showed that it stopped at loading agp440.sys . After booting with UPCD I got 3 options "an upgrade is in process do u want to continue / do you want to install win again / F3 exit (which boots)". I try to continue then there are missing files from CD. I boot with WinXP it does not enter the CD menu. Now even UBCD wont boot. I managed to boot somehow into DOS and chkdsk was ok on 2 partitions of the SATA HDD. Dont want to format as there is loads of stuff there, and even if I did- I cant boot it right...
Booting from XP CD asks me to continue current upgrade or cancel and install new version of Win or exit..
BTW Linspire live sees only the D: partition, not the C: one. Still I suspect C: is good, just the win config or registry may be bad...

Ok, so you can't boot into the project or finish your XP install??
When doing the XP install it complains about not being able to read CD's from the CD drive??

I really think you have some type of hardware failure that is stopping anything from booting. If all the answer to my questions above are YES, then I would say that from past experience you have a bad power supply.

If you have more information or details about your system you can share with us, it may help us figure out your problem.

I've run the XP CD install again - YES there are files it asks me to retry reading the CD but eventually all were read - and it failed loading... Now when the project CD loads if I select "Launch UBCD" it tells me there's an upgrade in progress, and the same 3 options...


System is 3Mhz/1Gram/80G SATA HD (2 partitions)/ DVDRW. The DVD shows on Primary master, whereas the Samsung HDD on Third Master.

You said "Launch UBCD" .... do you mean UBCD or UBCD4Win? this is very important because they are two different boot CD's

UBCD4Win boots into a text screen w/countdown and the only logical is to select "Launch UBCD..." but then it apparently reads something from the M$ install & gives 3 choices

You are being very unclear... let me explain...

UBCD is a DOS based boot CD

UBCD4Win is a Windows based boot CD that also has the ability to boot other types like UBCD


So lets start over to see if you can explain this better...

What was the name of the file you downloaded to build the project?
What instructions did you use to build the project?
What version of XP did you build the project with?
What type of XP CD are you using.. Retail, OEM other?
Why were you trying to update your Windows install with a CD and not a Service Pack update?

Please provide as much info as you have on the above and anything else that would explain why you started all of this etc...

UBCD4Win doesn't include all of the install files that it's looking for so "Continue" is naturally going to fail (as misleading as this sounds) but if you hit F10 at this screen then it should continue to boot UBCD4Win so you can get your files backed up then you can decide which way you want to go from there (repair or format).

Tom

Yes, since UBCD4WIN bootup is based on XP, of course, it uses the same bootup code. You see those options because it detects that something went wrong during the update. I would bypass the options as suggested above for the cd, back up important files, and attempt a repair installation.

I doubt that this is hardware failure, but it won't hurt to run diagnostics to make sure. I have seen this issue crop up many times on a SP2 upgrade. Any number of unseen issues under the hood with the existing installation can hose the upgrade and leave you with a broken machine. I have been able to recover 9 out of 10 times by performing a repair installation. I recommend performing a repair installation with XPSP2 and not SP1. That way, after recovery, you will have SP2 installed.

Hi Guys,
rdsok- I'm using UBDC4Win30 built on an SP2 with security packs slipstreamed from http://smithii.com/slipstream_xpsp2
pcuser- This CD boots and when I select "Launch UBCD4Win" it offers the XP options to continue upgr or cancel and install new version of windows.
1. selecting to continue upgrade (with XPCD in) and trying to complete the upgr gets the win graphic upgrading screen then detects the failed setup and reloads all drivers from CD
2. install new version (using XPSP2 CD) the install fails during last reboot with Win logo & blue bar.
3. F3 exit - reboots

Why I'm in this mess? The PC would not take SP2 service pack so I decided to do an in-place install from XPSP2 retail CD.
I cannot bypass anything to get a working/temp windows to do any backup... not even UBCD which should have allowed me at lease file manageer or explorer.

TIA for help.

Select "cancel" (F10?) and it should continue booting UBCD4Win

I can certainly address the issues with the UBCD4Win build now with the little bit of additional history you gave...

When building UBCD4Win from an XP SP2 CD... do not try to slipstream any additional updates into it.. use the basic SP2 disk only. The additional updates must finish their processes after the first boot of a system... since UBCD4Win ( or any BartPE based CD ) is running from read only media they can never complete their update process and you end up in the loop you are now in when booting from the CD.

In addition... BartPE builds ( including UBCD4Win ) are only tested and known to work with XP SP1 or SP2 builds... adding additional updates beyond these will have unknown consequences. Follow the build instructions from http://www.ubcd4win.com/howto.htm precisely and add no additional updates. Use only vanilla SP1 or SP2 CD's.

This should allow you to get UBCD4Win to work properly and then to get a backup at the very least. This may also be why you are having trouble with the repair install in the system itself but it can also be caused by a corruption of the system that is not repairable from a Repair install of XP SP2 in which case the backup is even more important to focus on since you may have to re-install Windows clean.

Tx rdsok. I was about to rebuild UBCD4Win using XPCD and retry.
It occured to me that either there may be a problem with geforce drivers or for the SATA HD or that the registry is bad.. Any idea how I can include solutions to that on the UBCD4Win if necessary?
TX

The GeForce drivers will have nothing to do with the errors that you have already mentioned for booting UBCD4Win itself... they may still come into play once you actually build it properly and boot up though. In the UBCD4Win directory that you are building from there is a DRIVERS folder.. go into the SCSIAdapter directory and remove the nVidia drivers that do not match the chipset you are building for... for instance.. if its a nForce3.. remove the other two directories ie nForce1_2 and nForce4 so you won't have driver conflicts.

All the above may explain why I can't boot properly into UBCD... and I am rebuilding it...
Still - all the Win installs were from the regular XPCD from 2004(?) with no slipstreaming!

Well.. I'm not addressing your Windows problem directly since your info you provided is so sparce and we can't say what was wrong there... the Windows side was purely speculation based on what you said you did to build UBCD4Win.

What you can not ignored about the Windows statements are.. you couldn't install a SP the normal way which certainly indicates a corruption and may still explain why the Repair install is also failing there because not all of the files/settings are being replaced in a Repair install.

Unless you are having some hardware issue resulting in failures ( which we can't discount at this point ), you need to seperate your UBCD4Win problems completely from your Windows problems in the discussion here or it will simply confuse the issues for both.

A clean UBCD4Win30 was generated using an XPSP2CD... Booting from it and selecting "Launch UBCD4Win.." Accesses the HDD and prints
"Starting CD ... Ok"
"Setup is unspecting your computer's hardware configuration"
"The computer is already in the process of being upgraded to MS Winwoes"...

So... I guess I would like to know
1. Any way I can get a boot to explorer for file maintenance / recovery?
2. Which way to continue and finalize the upgrade (or fiddle with it via command line or utilities or regedit?
3. Do I now boot+format+install?

Have you looked at the information from Microsoft http://support.microsoft.com/xpsp2getinstall relating to SP2 issues?

Have you tried booting into safe mode to finish the SP2 install?

Try the UBCD4Win CD on a different computer... if you get the same message again.. then there is something wrong in your build processes and I'm unable to guess what it may be. Starting UBCD4Win does not rely on the Windows on the computer it is being run on...

At this point it doesn't sound like the XP CD you are using is a true Microsoft build.. but that is just a guess.

Safe mode with networking or command prompt ends at ...\dirvers\agp440.sys (safe does not work)
More troubling is the MS page which directs me to an Intel page where a patch on a DOS boot diskette is available for certain celeron's / PIII pentium... I'm not sure it's valid for me???
I'm running Pentium 4 at 2.8Mh, AMIBIOS3.31a, no floppy, I dont see any boot from USB in the BIOS!!


Loaded that disk on a 600Mhz Celeron worked fine.
But as it is slow, I actually saw the same "Setup is inspecting your computer's configuration" and "Press [F6] to load drivers" displayed momentarily before showing the loading UBCD4W at the bottom above the white zebra progress line!

I disconnected the SATA and loaded Win on a fresh IDE HD on same machine - I had the CD retry read a couple of drivers - at the end same problem at final load of windows... But - this case UBCDW loads fine and I can access the partition files to examine/backup. So now I can check which files/drivers may be missing, whether the Intel BFREQIDE.COM solves the problem (kinda scary)... Any ideas?

I noticed that UBCD4W make several accesses to the HD while loading up. When the HD has a valid windows it loads ok. When the HD has an interrupted Setup - it will allow the MS(?) part to ask if I want to continue or restart the setup...???
So- while ther may be a Win startup or PC HW problem, I still can't log into my partition.