Um... i dont know what to say

**shizzzon** · December 30th, 2005, 07:12 PM

I received a Dell computer from someone who bought it at a pawn shop, surprised to find one there but anyways, they wanted it completely erased and start over with WinXP on it.

I got it, removed all partitions, created 1 spanning over whole drive, installed WinXP Pro on it.

After everything was done installing, WinXP installed all drivers except for audio.
For one - The computer was still detecting in a new boot.ini file that there used to be a winxp home on it and keeps asking me during bootup about it but find it odd since everything was removed and second-

This is the part that blew my mind away-

I shut it off after doing everything above last night because it was late.
I go to turn it on today to install the audio driver and when it gets in Windows, it wont let me access device manager or add new hardware from control panel.

Curious as to what's going on, i check what services are running by going to RUN and typing- services.msc
It brings up EVERYTHING is disabled except for 2 things which have nothing to do with what i need to do.

It will not let me enable anything because it keeps complaining that too many services are disabled and nothing can be enabled.

What in the world happened?

Only thing i know to do is write zerpos to it and start all over.

**PC TECH250** · December 30th, 2005, 07:45 PM

It sounds like your RPC is inactive as well as other essential background services. Msconfig
is one basic tool for seeing if you can enable these services before a wipe of the current XP
install on the drive. XP Pro offers a little more in this regard then the Home version. At RUN
on the Start menu type in the "msconfig" command and press enter to bring this menu up.

If and when this comes up, provided you didn't have a bad install, go over to the services
tab between the boot.ini and startup tabs and look to see how many of the services have a
check mark nect to them. If they are all checked you had a bad install. If several do not have
a checked box enable all and restart the system to see if this corrects the situation. If this
fails to activate the essential services you will more likely have to perform an install to repair
by booting from the installation cd to remove the current Windows directory. SFC /scannow
is also a command you can try to see if the system file checker can repair/replace files that
were either incompletely copied to the drive or were not installed at all.

**shizzzon** · December 30th, 2005, 08:20 PM

the only thing on is Remote Procedure Call (RPC) and something else, cant remember but nothing required.

Everything else is listed as disabled. I wil try to repair it but doesnt make any sense. It was fine last night, today, let's disable everything....weird.

**large_nostril** · December 30th, 2005, 08:26 PM

Only thing i know to do is write zerpos to it and start all over.

That would be my suggestion.

On top of that, I'd suggest checking the drive(s) for an MBR/Boot Sector virus... though it sounds like the drive just wasn't formatted properly the first time, which could cause these issues.

**Martoch** · December 30th, 2005, 08:31 PM

To get rid of the XP boot selection issue (remove Home as a choice), click start--run, type msconfig and hit OK. Go to the BOOT.ini tab and click on the 'check all boot paths' button.

That's a very common problem btw.

**PC TECH250** · December 30th, 2005, 09:44 PM

It sounds more like XP did a save existing information install then a complete wipe to be seeing
anything regarding XP Home. If you didn't disable the boot sector protection in the bios you
would run right into problems when installing over a previous installation. That would also
act like a boot sector virus hampering a full install of XP Pro.

If there is nothing on the drive at present that needs to be preserved then a complete type
of wipe of the drive with the boot sector protection off in the bios will allow a complete new
installation to go through without issues if the installation disk is good. Without a thorough
fresh partition and format you ended up with a bad install. If you enable all MS services in
the msconfig utility and still have issues then the wipe and reinstallation is the best way to
have a system up and running. Backup any important data first on removable media if you
already started copying any to the present installation. Make sure you go into the bios first
to disable the protection there before performing a low level format and reinstallation.

**asma123** · December 30th, 2005, 10:13 PM

i would go to control panel> performance and maintenance>administrative tools>services

and enable all the ones that are essential, and useful. Also, you might want to start them.

**PC TECH250** · December 30th, 2005, 10:59 PM

Originally Posted by asma123

i would go to control panel> performance and maintenance>administrative tools>services

and enable all the ones that are essential, and useful. Also, you might want to start them.

That would work provided enough essentials to allow setting changes to be made
were first active and running. The msconfig utilty would be the first route to take in
order to get the basics going. This will also depend on how good the install went
when XP Home was replaced by XP Pro. The optimum however would be to insure
that a clean and thorough installation took place for system integrity. This avoids
any unseen problems later developed by not having a good install to work with.

**shizzzon** · December 30th, 2005, 11:14 PM

i'll try to get things rolling tomorrow but i doubt i can enable any services. Not even Plug and Play can be enabled!

**PC TECH250** · December 31st, 2005, 02:02 AM

Without being able to get the basics running the indication here is a bad install on polluted
territory where XP can delete the existing primary to perform a fresh reinstallation. Once it
comes up with the new installation you can go back into the bios to enable boot protection.
That will keep the boot sector safe from most of the spywares and viruses. Make sure the
installation disk is also in good condition as well. By default the essential Windows services
should have already been running when the installation was complete. You shouldn't have
to zero fill the drive but that wouldn't hurt if the system was hit with a virus prior to your
efforts to install a different version of Windows. Assume there is one and wipe the drive.