My girlfriend has a little problem...

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03-23-2002, 11:42 AM
Samjham

My girlfriend has a little problem...

...well her computer does anyway.

I just recently bought her parts to build her a new computer and I'm having a little trouble getting the OS installed. I'm trying to put XP on her machine and this is what happens:

I boot up with the CD, set up my partitions and then format C:\ with NTFS and then it gets to the screen where it says windows is now loading files it needs for setup or whatever. Anyway, everytime it gets to that part at around 18% finished it gives me some error saying that it couldn't load some file and that the disc image is incorrect or something. It asks if I want to either retry to load the file or skip it. I do retry and it continues. Sometimes this happens a second time before finishing. It says that the CD might be bad or that there might be a hardware problem. I know that the CD is ok because I get the same thing when trying to load win2k, so it has to be hardware, but I'm not sure what. So then when it gets to the setup part (When Microsoft tells you about all the new cool "features" of XP) it always either crashes or gives me an error saying windows could not load. When I tried it with win2k I get a BSOD that says something like paging fault error or something like that. Anyone have any ideas?

Here's her hardware:

Celeron 1.1A
Asus TUSI-M with the Sis630 chipset (BIOS version 1011, there is a 1013 version that I'm going to try)
128MB Micron Cas2 PC133 RAM
40GB Western Digital ATA100 7200RMP
built in audio/video/lan
Codegen case w/300Watt Codegen PSU
Lite-On 52X CD-ROM

I think that's all the relevant hardware. I'm not sure what the problem is, the new BIOS may do the trick, but if not then it could be the HDD or the CD-ROM or possibly the PSU, but I really don't know. I'm pretty sure I have everything in the BIOS set up correctly (There really isn't much in the BIOS on this board) I don't think the HDD is bad though because it formatted fine. I really don't know. Any ideas? Thanks.
03-23-2002, 11:57 AM
ua549

It could very well be a bad CD. Return the entire package to the place of purchase or call Microsoft; they'll send you a no cost replacement.
03-23-2002, 12:27 PM
Samjham

Quote:

Originally posted by ua549
It could very well be a bad CD. Return the entire package to the place of purchase or call Microsoft; they'll send you a no cost replacement.

Well, considering the fact that I used a different win2k CD and had the exact same problem I kind of doubt that it's the CD. I doubt that 2 different CD's would have the same problem, so I kind of think it's hardware. I guess my last resort would be to send it back for another one though.
03-23-2002, 12:35 PM
Bretagus

I had a similar problem last weekend. I was using my Sony CDBurner as the 'install drive' (because it was drive letter D). Anyway, I yanked the IDE cable out from it, and used my DVD drive for the install drive. My burner works perfectly, it just didn't want to install an OS [XP or 2k]. But you have a regular CDRom drive. But, you may wanna try putting one of your CD drives into her computer. Its a hassle, but I suppose it can't hurt. Or you may wanna ignore me, and wait for better advice.

Hope I helped,
Bretagus
03-23-2002, 12:46 PM
Samjham

Thanks for the advice. I was kind of suspecting the CD-ROM, so I may try that. The other strange thing is that the file it always hangs up on is always different. In otherwords it's always at a different location in the setup process when it says the file can't be copied. Sometimes around 18% and other times around 50%.

One other thing that might be the problem is that I have the CD-ROM and the HDD on the same IDE cable (Stupid retail mobo only came with one IDE cable, what's up with that?) I have the CD_ROM as slave and the HDD as master. I'm going to go to Comp_USA today and pick up another cable so I can have them on seperate channels. That may help too, I don't know.

One other question, how do I format a disk so I can make a backup of the BIOS and then flash it? I pressed f8 on startup, but I can't seem to boot into DOS. I'm assuming that the XP CD needs to be in the drive because it has the formating utility on it too.
03-23-2002, 01:04 PM
Indus

Quote:

Originally posted by Samjham
Thanks for the advice. I was kind of suspecting the CD-ROM, so I may try that. The other strange thing is that the file it always hangs up on is always different. In otherwords it's always at a different location in the setup process when it says the file can't be copied. Sometimes around 18% and other times around 50%.

One other thing that might be the problem is that I have the CD-ROM and the HDD on the same IDE cable (Stupid retail mobo only came with one IDE cable, what's up with that?) I have the CD_ROM as slave and the HDD as master. I'm going to go to Comp_USA today and pick up another cable so I can have them on seperate channels. That may help too, I don't know.

One other question, how do I format a disk so I can make a backup of the BIOS and then flash it? I pressed f8 on startup, but I can't seem to boot into DOS. I'm assuming that the XP CD needs to be in the drive because it has the formating utility on it too.

Try skipping the file. It might work. I have the same problem at 52% and I skip that file. The installation works fine for me. My 2000 cd doesn't have a problem however.;)
03-23-2002, 01:12 PM
freedon

Quote:

Originally posted by ua549
It could very well be a bad CD. Return the entire package to the place of purchase or call Microsoft; they'll send you a no cost replacement.

they have this service?? i didn't know that

i suspect my win2k cd also is somewhat damaged
03-23-2002, 06:47 PM
richardginn

hmmmm I would try a new CD drive.
03-23-2002, 07:52 PM
Tracker00

hrm, what file does it stop at?
03-23-2002, 08:32 PM
thebove

i'd separate the cd-rom and hard drive, giving them each their own channel...you may want to try a different cd-rom altogether. also, if her bios has some sort option like boot sector virus protection, or something along those lines, make sure that it is disabled before doing the install....i've had many installs hang in strange places when this option was turned on.
03-23-2002, 09:17 PM
Samjham

Just fyi, it always stopped at a different file and then later today I started getting error messages that said something along these lines, "Files loaded into memory were not correctly copied to the hard drive" not in those exact words but anyway... so I started thinking either the HDD or the RAM is bad. I swapped out the RAM and sure enough it worked perfectly, so I'll have to RMA the bad stick. Thanks for all the help. :)
03-23-2002, 09:22 PM
ArB

I had similar problems with bad ram... I don't remember what the error messages were exactly, but they did trick me into thinking either my hard-drive or the CD was bad. Microsoft really needs to get some better error message writers :)
03-23-2002, 09:23 PM
Snodgras

WinXP

Make a folder on disk drive, copy CD to folder on disk drive, run winnt.exe from i386 directory.
03-23-2002, 11:11 PM
Bootleg

Quote:

Originally posted by ua549
It could very well be a bad CD. Return the entire package to the place of purchase or call Microsoft; they'll send you a no cost replacement.

i'd laugh if the copy was an illegal one...lol!
03-24-2002, 10:44 AM
PROX800

actually my CD burner didnt want to install XP either, but i tried my DVD which was hooked up to an E: drive, changed the cables, and that worked.
03-26-2002, 06:18 PM
kraven morehead

sounds to me like you have a few bad sectors on your hard drive.
if your install with your cd in the cdrw drive, and you still have the problem,
then the hard drive could be the answer
11-29-2002, 04:02 AM
Vlad_M

try setting your RAM to 3-3-3-7. As you can read in my other thread I found that it makes quite a lot of difference, sometimes RAM can crap out without any apparent reason.
11-29-2002, 06:15 AM
kbw

Vacuum out your CDrom drive and see if that helps.