Hi I bought a new pc beginning of this year. Since the graphics card i wanted was not in stock it got delivered with a temporary one and the promise to receive the desired card as soon as it was available. Yesterday i received the nw card (MSI RX800 XL-VT2D256E); i also received my offcial winodws XP cd. The OS installed when the pc was delivered was apparently a non-official version (as i found out when trying to download the latest updates/patches from microsoft). Since about 1,5 months my Logitech DiNovo stopped working and since i had no official XP i was unable to fix it. So i reverted to a simple keyboard and usb mouse. After installing the new graphics card yesterday the system booted up fine but the mouse was not working. I tried rebooting once more; no luck. I then tried with a ps2 mouse, no luck. I checked both mice on another computer and they worked fine there. Since the XP on it was a non-official i figured doing a "repair install" would be a good idea. I started around 19:00hr and it was indicated that it would take around 35minutes. It's now 10:41hr (so almost 16 hours later) and it's still running; indicating now it will take 32 minutes. The messages on the right of the screen listing the advantages and improvements of XP are still cycling and on the lower above the progress indicator it says "installing network". I don't think it's completely hung but i wonder why i takes this long. The main question is: do i let it run for maybe days and hope it finishes...or should i interrupt it? Will my data still be on the disk so i can back them up? Will i be able to boot into the OS or will it not be accessible? Configuration: Intel P4 3.4Ghz 1024KB/800Mhz LGA775 with cooler ThermalTake case Chill Innovation Power supply 510Watt Mistumi Floppy MSI 915P Neo2-Platinum LGA775 intel 915P motherboard ATX Kingston 2048MB DDR2/533 240pins PC4300 CL4.0 Dual Channel Kit memory 2x WD 250GB Serial ATA/150 (8MB) harddisks Lite-On SOHW-1653 dvd writer dual layer Thanks in advance for a prompt reply! Johan

The time to think about backing up your data was before atempting anything as drastic as a repair instal. I would not have had the patience to let it run even an hour, let alone 15 hours. I do not believe you can do any more damage by interrupting the instal at this stage. Be prepared to perform a complete format and clean instal. If you have another working PC you may be able to slave the drive into it to copy your critical data. Try that before wiping the drive. I used to have a signature but it disappeared and I just couldn't be bothered writing another so please feel free to ingore this.

Richard's suggestion is excellent. You already had too many problems before trying the repair reinstal. The fact that you allowed it to run for 15 hours suggested to me that it is beyond repair. i_XpUser

Most of the time, I also have a problem to use the Repair feature of Windows XP. When my computer crashed, I tried to repair, but it never worked. It even makes it worse after the repair. You should try to backup your data, format and install it again. That is better...

The joy of Windows. Repair or reinstall a lot! You can avoid many of these Windows problems with Linux. Linspire eases the transition for new users