Just last night, my PC was running perfectly, and then it randomly shut off on me, and I don't know why. When I restart my computer, it loads all the way up to the Windows XP loading screen, and it restarts itself. Since then, I have installed Windows XP Home Edition, but I lost all of my files from my other Windows XP version. Please help me.

Hello FrenchFry

Welcome to PC Help Forum

What other version of XP did you have and can you tell me where you obtained XP Home from please?

I Had Windows XP Service Pack 2,
and I now have an old upgrade disc i found for Windows XP Home Edition.

I find it strange how you could install an upgrade disk when when you already had XP SP2 on the system as windows should not allowed it as "there is a newer version of the operating system already present".

However if you did manage to do it somehow then you would have formatted whilst installing and therefore all your old stuff will be gone.

No, it's all there, still. I can get into some of my old files, but not all of them, and when I reboot, I see that I am dual booted. The two that i can select are named, Windows XP Media Center Edition and Windows XP Home Edition.

(I apologize if Windows XP Media Center and Windows XP Service Pack 2 are different.)

The Windows XP Media Center Edition is the one that doesn't work. It just does the restart problem all over again.

All i am trying to do is to get Windows XP Media Center Edition to work.

Also, my PC is a Compaq Presario, if that helps at all.

By using the upgrade disc and from what you're telling us you created a dual boot set up with Home and MC Edition accidentally. I'm going to suggest using your Media Center disc to enter recovery mode to recreate the MBR (Master Boot Record).

At this time I don't have a very good set of steps for you to follow from my head alone, and rather than lead you down the wrong path accidentally I'll leave you with that advice and write up/find some steps for you.

Ok so let's get this right yes, you had XP Media Centre SP2 and then somehow installed XP Home Edition?

Was there an unallocated partition already on the drive because if Media Centre occupied the whole drive you would have had to delete that to create multiple partitions before installing?

XP does not have any partitioning tools to do this after installation.