Ok, my "Wndows XP media center edition (acer)" was starting to get really slow so I decided to use my recovery discs and restore my default settings and resetting the whole C disc.. accidentaly used the recovery discs for my "Windows Vista 6930 (also Acer)" and I didn't realise it until I completed the whole process. Now my XP has turned into vista and I don't want it that way. Here's my problem.. I found my XP recovery discs and when I use them an error message pops up after a little while saying: "Cannot find preload.tag for SetBootIni"

I guess it's because my system is now a Vista and it's no success trying to use Xp recovery discs.. Please help restoring my Windows XP media center edition!

Hello boringbenji

Welcome to PC Help Forum.

Bet your not bored any more eh?

Ok it sounds to me like you have completely wiped the original XP MBR by replacing it with Vista, although how you quite managed to do this with OEM Recoveries from 2 different, albeit Acer, machines is quite obscure.

I'm open to opinion on this but to me you need to contact Acer for a new XP OEM install disk.

You can't really continue to keep using Vista as it's already installed on your other pc.

So there's no other way to restore my system then contacting acer?
If that's the only way to fix this I guess I have to..

Your XP machine may have viewed this as some obscure upgrade but it still should not have worked due to hardware parameter aspects.

Contact them, explain what's happened and let us know, in the meantime hold for a while in case others offer opinions.

When you load the recovery disk what options does it give you?
There are different sorts of disk one is just xp setup with OEM info and the other type is a disk image that rewrites the hd back as it left the factory.

Either way it should work but you may need to delete all partitions first does it give you that option? If you create a bootable cd from bootdisk

you can then wipe all the drive and the recover disk should work unless it refers to a recover partion which has been destroyed check in control panel admin tools disk manager to see if there are any other partitions on the drive

Hello Benji

Has the assistance provided at PC Help Forum assisted you in remedying your issue yet?

An update would be most appreciated.

Thank you.

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