Sorry.
I’d like to reformat the hard drive of my old computer. I recently put Office XP on it. Now when it starts, it freezes at the start screen. The flying window screen. You know, the XP is loading screen. It freezes there and refuses to move on.
If I press F5 or F8, I do get the advanced menu. But whatever I choose, the stupid thing freezes on the flying window.
Very frustrating. What should I do?
If absolutely none of the options in the boot menu work then you’ll probably have to boot from your WinXP CD, choose to install Windows, and then have it repair your current installation. This will reload all of the Windows system files without affecting data…at least in theory. It is possible that your user profile will get wiped out, so make sure you have backups of everything in your My Documents folder beforehand. Otherwise it’s usually pretty painless.
This should go without saying, but do not delete or format any partitions during the install process. Do not use the Repair Console. Just choose to install, then repair your existing copy of Windows.