Windows XP Recovery (in Off-topic)

I have done 2 Windows XP recoveries on my pc and when it gets to the screen like when i first bought my comp I fill out all of the information and then after a couple of pages I get to one that says Congratulations and click finish. Well I do and it sits on that screen forever. I hav restarted a couple of times and it goes back to that last screen after it starts up does anyone else know what I could do??

You might have a bad copy. Not that I would support software piracy, but is there someone else you know that has a copy you can throw on? If you can successfully install another copy of XP, you can probably rule out hardware issues.

see i have no copy of the disk i ran it off the hard drive it was preinstalled

Yeah, that thought struck me after I finished the above reply. I never had much luck with recovery programs in the past, so I stopped relying upon them. Do you have a lot of stuff on your hard drive that you still need, or would a simple reformat be acceptable?

Do you have a valid internet connection on that computer? If the drivers are not installed for your NIC then you won't, in which case XP will hang as it tries to contact the registration center.

i had it plugged into the internet the first time then the second time i did the recovery i had it unplugged and i could replace things that were on my harddrive it would suck but atleast my comp would work but i dunno how to do that thou not on XP

When you do a Windows recovery your original drivers do not remain intact.

ok so what do i do

Install a tier 1 NIC card like 3COM 509 or any other card that is supported with a regular XP installation. (No 3rd Party Drivers)

Did you wipe out the original XP install, or did you just reinstall over it? Reinstall without wipe = bad.

no i did the recovery that you do tapping f10 when it starts up my comp didnt come with an XP disk when i bought it

i got an installation disk but, my computer won't run it is there anything i can do while the computer is starting up to make it run the XP installtion disk??

Go into the BIOS at startup and set it to boot from the CD-ROM first.

ok how do i get to BIOS??

The BIOS is sometimes referred to as "Setup". Watch the bottom of your screen carefully as it boots up. It will usually tell you to hit F-1 or something.