I have had an old desktop sitting around for a few years now with Windows XP on it, and it hasn't worked for a while (it kept saying "NTLDR Is Missing" or something like that), and I've given up on trying to fix it, so I was wondering, would it be possible to install Windows 7 onto the hard drive without the computer not booting up?
Why not just reinstall Windows XP? If it came with XP, it's highly unlikely to run Windows 7 without severe issues. The error you're encountering is familiar, but I can't remember exactly what it means. If I had to make an educated guess I'd say that your XP install isn't being recognised.
I took a look at that link, and I've tried the original Windows XP Home Edition SP1 disc that came with it, and it went past the loading screen and it went to the Windows XP Setup screen, but it gave me a bunch of errors (way too many for me to type), and it eventually said something like Windows XP has encountered an error, please restart your computer. I restart it, and it goes through the whole thing again.
the error essentially means that a critical windows file has been deleted or become corrupt. the only solution is reinstalling windows.
windows XP. windows 7 is completely different and installing on top of XP would cause all kinds of problems.
Thanks...I'll give it a try and let you guys know what happened. Post Merge: [time]1304366973[/time] I have just tried to re install Windows XP Home Edition SP1 (which was on it before it broke) and it still did not work. Is there any other option? Post Merge: [time]1304378876[/time] Well, I actually somehow managed to re-install Windows XP on it, now I'm just going to upgrade to SP2 so that I can install Windows 7 on it, the hopefully I'll get it to connect to the internet, because for some reason, it only likes Dial-Up. Thanks for all your help!
