XP-Pro setup problem

[Guest]

I installed XP-Pro some months ago in E: partition of a system that already
had Win-98SE on partition C:. I allowed setup to format as NTFS. All was well
until the system crashed, trashing partition E: to the extent that I could
not recover it. So I reformatted E: as Fat32 and started over. Setup stops
very early in the process (loading setup files) with a message that "The file
atapi.sys is corrupted. Press any key to continue.". I spoke with M/S tech
support and was directed to copy the I386 folder from the CD to the C: drive
and "Run" winnt32.exe from that folder. Same result. Any ideas?

 

[Guest]

John, I had somewhat the same problem. If recovering files is not necessary
for you, what I did to get my drive back was I booted with a win98se floppy,
used FDISK to find the hard drive answering YES to the LARGE block questions,
FDISK showed only part of my hard drive, I rebooted with same floppy, then
FDISK, this time answering NO to the LARGE block questions, then I rebooted
without the floppy using the Win XP Pro CD and then, finally, XP PRO found
my entire hard drive. AFTER I lost all my files and my 3 partitions on a 200
GB hard drive by letting scan disk run when windows tried to start. Hope
this works for you. -AL-

 

[Bruce Chambers]

I installed XP-Pro some months ago in E: partition of a system that already
had Win-98SE on partition C:. I allowed setup to format as NTFS. All was well
until the system crashed, trashing partition E: to the extent that I could
not recover it. So I reformatted E: as Fat32 and started over. Setup stops
very early in the process (loading setup files) with a message that "The file
atapi.sys is corrupted. Press any key to continue.". I spoke with M/S tech
support and was directed to copy the I386 folder from the CD to the C: drive
and "Run" winnt32.exe from that folder. Same result. Any ideas?

Problems copying files or corrupted files during installation are
most often caused by defective or sub-standard hardware; in order of
likelihood, either RAM, the hard drive, or the motherboard. In all
likelihood, whatever hardware failure caused the original "crash" is now
preventing reinstallation of the OS. An "unrecoverable" partition would
lead me to suspect the hard drive as the prime candidate.


--

Bruce Chambers

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