I am dealing with a similar issue that I read about in this thread:
I have an old eMachine and am trying to restore it to a newer Dell. It is on XP Pro and I have the installation disks with SP2 on it. When finished the restore, I got the expected "could not start normally" message and followed the recommendation to do an in-place upgrade. However, when I loaded the disk, my only options were:
- To set up Windows XP now, press ENTER.
- To repair a Windows XP installation using Recover Console, press R.
- To quit Setup without installing Windows XP, press F3.
There is no upgrade option at all it seems. I selected R as also was suggested based on the Microsoft article here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/978788
Unfortunately, after I select the hard drive I want to repair and it asks me for the Admin password, there are no further instructions. It simply gives me a black screen with C:\WINDOWS
Am I missing something in the repair reinstall process?