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[travis1919 Profile]

ok first let me say i don't know near half as much as most of you know so please bare with me.

ill get straight to it.

i dled a 30day trial of vista. it was in iso format.

i used a virtural clone driver to open it.

loaded it up and it works fine.

the problem is that i want/need to go back to XP to save a few files that i know will get erased because i have to re download a few of my programs. thats a different story.

anyways when i turn on the computer the first thing on the screen gives me three options.

1. an earlier windows (i forgot the exatct wording)
2. windows vista
3. i think its like reformat or somehing?

anyways i hit 1 to get to XP. that takes me to a screen that says C:/windows. i select that option ( the other two are two d drives)

then it asks me for the admin password.

i first didnt know i had a pw on there but i typed in the pw that i use for just about everything else and nothing.

try it three times and it forces a reboot.

thank you so much for those that actually took the time to read this and thank you in advance for anyone that can help me out. your help would be more than greatly appreciated.

i just thought about another potential problem. when my 30 days are up and i don't want to use the timestop thing and want to go back to XP, will i even be able to?!?

ughhh.

[yeshuas]

First did you create a partition for Vista?

[travis1919 Profile]

no, i dont think i did. did i screw up there?

whenever i opened the vista iso file it had the virtual drive as a shortcut with it, so i think i just souble clicked it and wet from there.

[yeshuas]

I'm not that familiar with creating virtual drives, but hang on you came to the right place.

[The Phoenix Profile]

When you mounted the ISO and set off the install did you click UPGRADE or CLEAN INSTALL ?

Also can you check exactly what that third entry is on the boot manager screen, and when you choose number 1 for your XP did it take you straight to that screen you mentioned as it sounds a little strange.

Even if you have broken your XP install and need to reformat everything and start again there are a number of options to backup your files, we'll see where you are then come up with a few such as connecting the HDD to another PC as a slave drive so you can backup what you wanted or such as running a linux boot disc and baking up the files to a usb stick, etc.

As for the timer stop thing, that is actually illegal and PROnetworks does not condone or support any illegal action.

Although, you don't just have 30 days as your grace period, with the simple running of a command at the end of your 30 days you can reset the timer back to 30 days, this is an official command put in place by microsoft to allow users plenty of time to try Vista out and can only be used a maximum of three times which basically gives you 3-4 months to decide if you want to buy it.

Let us know anyway.

[travis1919 Profile]

alright i tried it again and wrote down the exact information it gave me on the screen.

i hope this will clarify anything.

--------------

Windows Boot Manager

highlight which one you want to open...

earlier version of windows
vista
ms windows recovery console

( i found out that it will take you to the same exaact screen by pressing the 1st and the third option)

anyways that screen is exactly as follows:

MS Windows XP(TM) Recovery Console
The Recovery Cosole provides system repair and recovery functionality.
type exit to quit.

1.D:\MiniNT
2.D:\I386
3.C:\Windows

which windows would you like to log onto?
(to cancel press enter)

i press 3 here and then it says to type in the administrator password.

and as far as the timestop thing i wasnt a big fan of that idea anyways. but thank you for the heads up.