Okay, I know this really isn't within the scope of the site, but... C'mon, where else can I find a group of people that are both as intelligent and as friendly as the people here? Besides, I know there's a few CBGians that know their way around computers and back...
Anyway, I recently (last month) was having some severe hardware issues with my desktop, and ended up needing to replace my old motherboard, which was dying, with a new one (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130305). I've managed to do that, as well as fix up any damage that caused (almost lost some important files!), and then attempted a repair/upgrade install of Windows XP Pro (avoiding reformats, here).
The install was... problematic. It would hang at various spots, which turned out to be the result of drivers not installing properly-- specifically, the serial port driver and the driver for the Virtualbox network bridge. With Google's help, I managed to disable the installation of those drivers (the former I won't use, the latter I can replace), which allowed the installation to finally finish.
So, now I have XP finally installed, and everything should be good, right? Apparently not. I can boot into XP now, but once I give my username and password, all it shows is my wallpaper, and nothing else. I can ctrl-alt-del into the task manager, but that doesn't really help me out. Despite not having a task bar, Task Manager says I have explorer.exe (default shell) running. If i try using Task Manager to start any new process at all, it instead then crashes. I still can't do anything.
Booting into Safe Mode doesn't work, either. It just hangs at mup.sys-- a problem I've dealt with before in unrelated cases.
Also odd is that when XP does boot, it doesn't work with my USB mouse or keyboard; PS/2 only. I think this might be related to the fact that I used the PS/2 mouse and keyboard when installing, in hopes that that might help.
Can anyone help me figure out what's going on, and maybe how to fix it? Again, I know there's other sites that might be better suited for this sort of issue, but I know you guys will understand just how necessary a working computer is in order to post and other important things. At this point, I'm appreciative of any help I can get!
If you've been able to recover important files, why do you not want to reformat?
You've done everything I would have done.
I say chuck it, and clean install after formatting.
Ninja, by "important files", I was referring primarily to my SIG character sheet. I probably could back up everything else, but I have a feeling that might take even more time and work than just trudging right through whatever this issue is. I just wish I knew what this issue is, and how to fix it...
In my experience, that tends to be the best option. Starting with a blank slate can be nice, anyway.
Making a ton of progress here, but it's still offline. The computer shop said it'd be $150 to fix, which I don't have.
KEEP IT UP...WE NEED YOU!
Have you still not tried reformating?
Nope. I'm actually well beyond that point.
How can you be beyond reformatting? Oh god, is it still in one piece? Was there blood? Did you cry?