dead computer, at least I think its dead

[spokat]

I'm going to try real hard not to write a novel here. I have an older computer running xp home with 320 ram memory. I have a xp pro disc and I took it upon myself to pop it in my old computer to do an upgrade. I just wanted to take it on a test run to make sure it wouldn't screw anything up before I did the install on my GOOD computer.
This old computer is the kids and its used for playing games only.

ok. I put the disc in, chose upgrade and it did its business for quite awhile. Then I got an error. I can't remember what it said now, something about not being able to find something or unable to do something. I'm sorry I can't remember, I've been trying to fix this all day and have seen several errors since then.

The problem is they only flash for one second. My computer restarted itself after the first error, then it flashed error again. This time it said something about the disc and advised cleaning the disc. So I took the disc out and wiped it off and put it back in.

Now this is what it does nonstop. It boots, I get the windows xp logo with the line thing at bottom, I get a black screen with nothing on it, then it goes to the blue setup screen and says setup restarting.......then it reboots and does the whole thing over again.

I have lost my desktop entirely. I cannot get into safe mode. Oh yeah thats the other thing, my keyboard quits functioning only to work again at initial bootup. Holding F8 down does nothing...I dont know if its because my keyboard quits working or what.

I found on the net a way to boot your computer up and bring up command prompt. It involved burning a disc. I did this and the thing actually worked and brought me to different options as a way of fixing xp. Problem: my keyboard wouldn't work to choose any options.

I'm thinking the installation got interrupted and somewhere somehow I ended up deleting my entire OS. No desktop, no command prompt. Nothing. How screwed am I?

Now after rebooting say 100x today, it now goes to windows logo screen then a black screen with cursor pulsating in upper left corner. No keyboard function. (my keyboard worked fine unti I decided to mess with it, btw.)

At that point I turned it off and came here.
Any idea? again, no safe mode, no recovery disc :( for that matter I dont even have a recovery drive. help?

renne

[jbennet]

to recover your OS boot from the windows xp pro install cd and there should be an option to perform a repair.

[spokat]

yes but when I have the cd in, it just goes thru its routine of showing windows logo, black screen, then blue setup restarting screen (setup meaning xp pro setup)

is there anyway to delete this so I can repost over at trouble shooting, dead machines? I didnt even realize that was a topic until after the fact.

[spokat]

jbennet, just wanted to let you know that replacing the keyboard on my computer worked wonders. ty for letting me know about the usb problem. I now have a functioning keyboard.

I actually got the thing to finish installing xp pro last night. It took about 20 minutes. Then it rebooted.
When it came back up I got the windows xp logo, then the blue xp setup restarting screen (same as before) then constant restart.

am currently beating head against wall. will post more later when I recover.

[jbennet]

hmm thats really wierd

[spokat]

ok. recap: short n sweet.
attempted to upgrade xp home to xp pro on rebuilt dell computer with 320 ram.
installation stopped midway, said error reading something.
now when i start computer I get the dell screen, windows logo screen, then a blue screen telling me that xp pro setup is restarting.
then its the same scenario over and over.

I have gone thru the process of pressing f8, booting from cd, choosing to continue installation by hitting enter and then it spends about 30 min copying files only to restart and do the above scenario again.

i cannot get to anything when I am on that screen that gives you choices: i.e, start system from last good configuration, safe mode, safe mode with command prompt.

anytime I choose something it just restarts with the whole above situation.

OK, I screwed around a bit and
now finally I have something on my computer which I have time to read. It says this:

Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem.
Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware.
Plz check the windows documentation about hardware disk config and your hardware reference manual.

I have no recovery partition. I have no manual. How do I go about fixing this? Do I need to purchase something that will repair my hardware?

edit: oh yeah there was also a window that poppped up briefly that said insufficient memory something-something.....is the problem that I tried to install pro on a wimpy computer? I thought it would be fine since it ran xp home ok

thks