Repairing a Win XP installation

[Dr_Weasel]

How does one go about repairing a Win XP installation? I have a feeling that its not as simple as Win 98 used to be where you would just put the CD in and install the OS back on top of the old one.

The father-in-law has managed to get a virus on his PC even though he was protected by Norton and Norton identified this virus back in 2002!

As a result Norton deleted a number of files (such as Loader.exe which I beleive is malware) and when he boots up his PC he now gets some dialouge boxes complaining that things like "IE.dll has performed an illegal operation".

Hes now virus free, but until I can get to his PC at the weekend I cant do a great deal, but I was going to clear his PC of spyware using Adaware and try and reinstall the OS back ontop of its self.

So is it just a case of reinstalling XP back into that partition or have they made it more complex?

 

[xane]

I did an install of XP Home over an existing Windows 98SE, it asked if I wanted to upgrade or overwrite.

Bear in mind a fresh XP install will normally do a NTFS reformat.

 

[Dr_Weasel]

This is an existing Win XP installation on which I wish to put a fresh copy of the Win XP OS files back on top to replace anything that Norton deleted.

I refered to Win98 as with that OS, by installing Win 98 back on top of Win98 it just replaced the files. I had a feeling that Win XP was different and installed a second copy of the OS a partition and then asked you at boot time which one you wanted.

 

[xane]

Ah right, I understand now.

Boot from the XP disk and it will ask if you want to repair or install, don't choose repair as this is some kind of XP replacement of SFC and wont do anything.

The install option will detects existing installations and asks if you want to re-install them, this is one you should take.

It acts like a regular install, except it will not erase any of the programs or settings, it does just what you want, a complete refresh of all the OS files from the CD, takes about 40 minutes or so.

You may need to re-install all the service packs afterwards, depending on how old your XP CD is.

 

[Dr_Weasel]

Marvellous! That was the info I was after.

Ta.