"New" computer still not running - lost its legs!

[Seum]

Hello Experts

I recently put together a computer with a new ASUS m'board with CPU, a
new Corsair TX750 PSU,and a new RAM card. What was missing was the CD
with Win Xp and my 750GB Seagate HD. I bought a brand new spanking Xp
CD, except for the most important number/s, that is/are missing. Is it
possible that the numbers are embedded in the CD?

The Seagate has 3 partitions and, recently, I tried to install Win2K on
one of them, while it was attached to the Win 7 machine but it failed
miserably.

Then I installed the Seagate in my "New" computer but I failed to
install Win Xp. It seemed to be loading ok at first but then it stopped
with : The message "Inf. file txtsetup.sif is corrupt or missing -
status 256."

One solution might be:

"Boot Problem (corrupt txtsetup.sif ???)
Forum Windows XP : General Discussion - Boot Problem (corrupt
txtsetup.sif ???)
Related Content
You have searched for "status 256 computer" . You might be interested in
the following threads:

* VT82C590 APOLLO VP-2
* Is There Any Flash Left In Audio Players?
* Conclusion And Performance Analysis, Continued
* Bigfoot Announces New Xeno NIC
* UPDATE: Samsung to ship hybrid hard disk drive in January 2007

See more for "status 256 computer"

There must be a simpler way.

OK EXPERTS, what now?

 

[Nobody > (Revisited)]

I bought a brand new spanking Xp CD, except for the most important
number/s, that is/are missing. Is it possible that the numbers are
embedded in the CD?

Nope. The "numbers" (Product Key, COA,License Key) came with the
packaging. Without that, you may as well have bought a coaster.

Get a refund (if you can)

FWIW, you can get the Dell OEM XP install disks still in sealed packages
WITH the "numbers" all over on the web cheap. There's no "Dell only"
locking on them, so they install on other hardware just fine, just make
sure that the COA come with it.

--
"Shit this is it, all the pieces do fit.
We're like that crazy old man jumping
out of the alleyway with a baseball bat,
saying, "Remember me motherfucker?"
Jim “Dandy” Mangrum

 

[VanguardLH]

I bought a brand new spanking Xp CD, except for the most important
number/s, that is/are missing. Is it possible that the numbers are
embedded in the CD?

It never dawned on you as soon as you received the install CD with no
COA and no serial number that you had a pirated copy? Hope you didn't
spend too much since it's not likely you'll get a refund from a pirate.

 

[Mike Easter]

I recently put together a computer with a new ASUS m'board with CPU, a
new Corsair TX750 PSU,and a new RAM card. What was missing was the CD
with Win Xp and my 750GB Seagate HD.

Can we refine this report/question into: what mobo/cpu, what ram, what
hdd/s and what/which OS you are interesting in installing?

Does this rig have a floppy?

I bought a brand new spanking Xp CD, except for the most important
number/s, that is/are missing. Is it possible that the numbers are
embedded in the CD?

No. Absent a license and its credentials, you are using an unlicensed v.

The Seagate has 3 partitions

You can do whatever you want to do about the partition situation.

I tried to install Win2K on one of them, while it was attached to the
Win 7 machine but it failed miserably.

So far, this sentence is not useful unless your goal is to install the
Win2K instead of XP which doesn't have credentials.

Then I installed the Seagate in my "New" computer but I failed to
install Win Xp. It seemed to be loading ok at first but then it stopped
with : The message "Inf. file txtsetup.sif is corrupt or missing -
status 256."

If you have a floppy, you might boot from that. MS has a place to
download a boot floppy maker

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=8030 The Windows
XP startup disk will automatically load the correct drivers to gain
access to the CD-ROM drive and start a new installation of Setup. -
Windows XP Home Edition startup disks will not work for Windows XP
Professional installations and vice-versa. - The installation program
will prompt you to provide formatted, 1.44MB floppy disks onto which the
installation program will copy its files.


There is a different link for a program to make a floppy if the XP
install CD you have is home instead of pro.

 

[Seum]

It never dawned on you as soon as you received the install CD with no
COA and no serial number that you had a pirated copy? Hope you didn't
spend too much since it's not likely you'll get a refund from a pirate.

It was bought via Amazon. Does that mean anything? Is is likely that
Fujitsu Siemens are selling pirated copies? I am told that the other two
numbers are on the way.

 

[VanguardLH]

It was bought via Amazon. Does that mean anything? Is is likely that
Fujitsu Siemens are selling pirated copies? I am told that the other two
numbers are on the way.

I believe there's Amazon retail and then there's Amazon auctions. I
suspect you bought from their auction listings which means Amazon, just
like eBay, isn't responsible for the contents of a sale. You have to go
after whoever sold you the product. Was it actually Amazon? Got a link
to the sale page?

 

[Paul]

Hello Experts

I recently put together a computer with a new ASUS m'board with CPU, a
new Corsair TX750 PSU,and a new RAM card. What was missing was the CD
with Win Xp and my 750GB Seagate HD. I bought a brand new spanking Xp
CD, except for the most important number/s, that is/are missing. Is it
possible that the numbers are embedded in the CD?

The Seagate has 3 partitions and, recently, I tried to install Win2K on
one of them, while it was attached to the Win 7 machine but it failed
miserably.

Then I installed the Seagate in my "New" computer but I failed to
install Win Xp. It seemed to be loading ok at first but then it stopped
with : The message "Inf. file txtsetup.sif is corrupt or missing -
status 256."

One solution might be:

"Boot Problem (corrupt txtsetup.sif ???)
Forum Windows XP : General Discussion - Boot Problem (corrupt
txtsetup.sif ???)
Related Content
You have searched for "status 256 computer" . You might be interested in
the following threads:

* VT82C590 APOLLO VP-2
* Is There Any Flash Left In Audio Players?
* Conclusion And Performance Analysis, Continued
* Bigfoot Announces New Xeno NIC
* UPDATE: Samsung to ship hybrid hard disk drive in January 2007

See more for "status 256 computer"

There must be a simpler way.

OK EXPERTS, what now?

You can use a copy of Nero CD/DVD Speed or DiscSpeed. I have version
4.7.7.13 and it has a "bad block scan". You can insert the CD, and use
a program like that, to check whether the entire disc is readable or not.
Some of the Nero tools are free, as the tools like InfoTool and DiscSpeed
were written by Erik Deppe and offered for download from his website.
They're also bundled by Nero.

In terms of WinXP installing, what is used, is the contents of the i386 folder.
There are roughly 5000 files in there, and they're compressed. The last
character in the file extension is an underscore, to show the file is
compressed. You can "extract" a file, to uncompress it.

On the one hand, if your CDROM was anywhere near to a retail SKU, and
someone out here has a matching CDROM, they could run md5sum and compute
a checksum for each of the 5000 files, which would tell you whether any
of your files had been hacked, or whether the files were corrupted
in some way.

Other than that, there isn't a lot of amusement value in a Windows
installer CDROM without a license key. Maybe target practice...

*******

It's possible to copy the i386 folder, from the CD onto the hard
drive. That is a way of avoiding a CD based problem (assuming the
copy works without incident, or you use data recovery software against
the CDROM). While Microsoft supplies a six floppy boot set, for booting
a computer and preparing for installation, they were only offering that
for WinXP SP1 and WinXP SP2. When I wanted a six floppy set for WinXP SP3,
it wasn't available. When I tried the SP2 floppy set, I couldn't get it
to see the WinXP SP3 stuff (what a waste of time!).

What I did instead, was use an MSDOS floppy with SMARTDRV on it, and
did the install from there. You boot the MSDOS floppy, which leaves
you at the A: prompt. You CD to the FAT32 hard drive
partition containing i386 (cd D:\i386), and run one of the two of
(WINNT.EXE , WINNT32.EXE), as one of those will run from
MSDOS and start an install. My MSDOS floppy was made from a Win98
system, to give some idea how it could see a FAT32 partition.

I created two FAT32 partitions before starting the install. The
I386 folder went into the second partition. The installer was
pointed at the first partition. And that OS, is what boots this
computer today, so the install worked fine. And I did it, just
for fun. To see if hard disk installation was any faster.

Paul

 

[Seum]

I believe there's Amazon retail and then there's Amazon auctions. I
suspect you bought from their auction listings which means Amazon, just
like eBay, isn't responsible for the contents of a sale. You have to go
after whoever sold you the product. Was it actually Amazon? Got a link
to the sale page?

You must be thinking of eBay.

I'm not aware of any Amazon auctions, at least in the U.K.. I ordered 5
parts, 3 came directly from Amazon, and the other two from independent
sellers. I don't know about the relationship that exists between Amazon
and the sellers.

 

[VanguardLH]

You must be thinking of eBay.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-list...?ie=UTF8&qid=1311752304&sr=8-3&condition=used

This is a user selling their HP printer through Amazon. Auctions don't
always incur bidding. Even eBay offers sellers can have fixed-priced
auctions. Call them "classifieds" if that suits you. In the page
linked above, notice the seller is NOT Amazon. Amazon is just providing
the "store" to sell the user's wares.

See Amazon's selling services to their users:
http://www.amazonservices.com/content/sell-on-amazon.htm

There's a good chance that what you bought wasn't a product sold by
Amazon but by some users with an auction, er, classified, er, whatever
through Amazon. That's why I was wondering what was the URL to the sale
page at Amazon as that would show who was the real seller (but the page
might not be available anymore if the sale is over).

Since you said the "numbers are on the way" then it appears the seller
is making good on the product they sold you to make it usable.

 

[Seum]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-list...?ie=UTF8&qid=1311752304&sr=8-3&condition=used

This is a user selling their HP printer through Amazon. Auctions don't
always incur bidding. Even eBay offers sellers can have fixed-priced
auctions. Call them "classifieds" if that suits you. In the page
linked above, notice the seller is NOT Amazon. Amazon is just providing
the "store" to sell the user's wares.

See Amazon's selling services to their users:
http://www.amazonservices.com/content/sell-on-amazon.htm

There's a good chance that what you bought wasn't a product sold by
Amazon but by some users with an auction, er, classified, er, whatever
through Amazon. That's why I was wondering what was the URL to the sale
page at Amazon as that would show who was the real seller (but the page
might not be available anymore if the sale is over).

Since you said the "numbers are on the way" then it appears the seller
is making good on the product they sold you to make it usable.

What threw me off was an invoice with Amazon.co.uk as a header for a
modem and a cable connection. There was no address given there, so you
are right. Amazon is just the manager. I'll be more careful in future.
Many of the items sold there have prices way below the usual shop
prices, so I guess it is a mixed bag.

What I hate is the purchases coming from all directions - it's
confusing. I'll buy the smaller items from local shops instead.

 

[Seum]

Can we refine this report/question into: what mobo/cpu, what ram, what
hdd/s and what/which OS you are interesting in installing?

Does this rig have a floppy?


No. Absent a license and its credentials, you are using an unlicensed v.


You can do whatever you want to do about the partition situation.


So far, this sentence is not useful unless your goal is to install the
Win2K instead of XP which doesn't have credentials.


If you have a floppy, you might boot from that. MS has a place to
download a boot floppy maker

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=8030 The Windows
XP startup disk will automatically load the correct drivers to gain
access to the CD-ROM drive and start a new installation of Setup. -
Windows XP Home Edition startup disks will not work for Windows XP
Professional installations and vice-versa. - The installation program
will prompt you to provide formatted, 1.44MB floppy disks onto which the
installation program will copy its files.


There is a different link for a program to make a floppy if the XP
install CD you have is home instead of pro.

Thanks Mike. I have been very busy and will be back to this topic soon.

 

[Seum]

You can use a copy of Nero CD/DVD Speed or DiscSpeed. I have version
4.7.7.13 and it has a "bad block scan". You can insert the CD, and use
a program like that, to check whether the entire disc is readable or not.
Some of the Nero tools are free, as the tools like InfoTool and DiscSpeed
were written by Erik Deppe and offered for download from his website.
They're also bundled by Nero.

In terms of WinXP installing, what is used, is the contents of the i386
folder.
There are roughly 5000 files in there, and they're compressed. The last
character in the file extension is an underscore, to show the file is
compressed. You can "extract" a file, to uncompress it.

On the one hand, if your CDROM was anywhere near to a retail SKU, and
someone out here has a matching CDROM, they could run md5sum and compute
a checksum for each of the 5000 files, which would tell you whether any
of your files had been hacked, or whether the files were corrupted
in some way.

Other than that, there isn't a lot of amusement value in a Windows
installer CDROM without a license key. Maybe target practice...

*******

It's possible to copy the i386 folder, from the CD onto the hard
drive. That is a way of avoiding a CD based problem (assuming the
copy works without incident, or you use data recovery software against
the CDROM). While Microsoft supplies a six floppy boot set, for booting
a computer and preparing for installation, they were only offering that
for WinXP SP1 and WinXP SP2. When I wanted a six floppy set for WinXP SP3,
it wasn't available. When I tried the SP2 floppy set, I couldn't get it
to see the WinXP SP3 stuff (what a waste of time!).

What I did instead, was use an MSDOS floppy with SMARTDRV on it, and
did the install from there. You boot the MSDOS floppy, which leaves
you at the A: prompt. You CD to the FAT32 hard drive
partition containing i386 (cd D:\i386), and run one of the two of
(WINNT.EXE , WINNT32.EXE), as one of those will run from
MSDOS and start an install. My MSDOS floppy was made from a Win98
system, to give some idea how it could see a FAT32 partition.

I created two FAT32 partitions before starting the install. The
I386 folder went into the second partition. The installer was
pointed at the first partition. And that OS, is what boots this
computer today, so the install worked fine. And I did it, just
for fun. To see if hard disk installation was any faster.

Paul

Thanks for your post Paul. I have been very busy Paul and I'll be back soon.

 

[Pennywise]

Then I installed the Seagate in my "New" computer but I failed to
install Win Xp. It seemed to be loading ok at first but then it stopped
with : The message "Inf. file txtsetup.sif is corrupt or missing -
status 256."

txtsetup.sif, I know this text file personally.

Editing this file was how you removed the 120 day limit for WinNT.

The install depends upon it. It normally appears in the Root
(c:\txtsetup.sif) and dictates how the OS is installed.

It can be deleted after an installation if you like a clean root, but
normally deletes itself.

On the install CD it's not compressed and can be found (if it exist) by
searching for it.

 

[Seum]

txtsetup.sif, I know this text file personally.

Editing this file was how you removed the 120 day limit for WinNT.

The install depends upon it. It normally appears in the Root
(c:\txtsetup.sif) and dictates how the OS is installed.

It can be deleted after an installation if you like a clean root, but
normally deletes itself.

On the install CD it's not compressed and can be found (if it exist) by
searching for it.


--

How the Curiosity Mars Rover Will Land and Navigate,
cause nothing could possibly go wrong with this plan.

Thank you PennyWise

I will try that suggestion.

 

[Seum]

Can we refine this report/question into: what mobo/cpu, what ram, what
hdd/s and what/which OS you are interesting in installing?

1 ASUS M4A88TD-V-EVO-USB3
2 Corsair 2 GB DDR3-1333 PC3-10600 CL9 Value Select PC Memory
Module (VS2GB1333D3)
3 Corsair Memory TX750W series ATX Power Supply
4 AMD Athlon II X2 255 - 3.1 GHz - AM3 Socket (ADX255OCGQBOX)
5 Seagate 750GB HD

Does this rig have a floppy?

A floppy drive is available

No. Absent a license and its credentials, you are using an unlicensed v.

I have someone at Amazon frantically (I hope!) looking for that number.

You can do whatever you want to do about the partition situation.


So far, this sentence is not useful unless your goal is to install the
Win2K instead of XP which doesn't have credentials.

I have, or had, two goals: add Win2K to the Win 7 box, and Xp to the
"new" box. Two failures already

If you have a floppy, you might boot from that. MS has a place to
download a boot floppy maker

That is a good idea. My older floppy disk does not work with my "new"
box because of the lack of a connection. A couple of weeks ago I bought
a new floppy disk drive with a USB connection, so I can use that now.

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=8030 The Windows
XP startup disk will automatically load the correct drivers to gain
access to the CD-ROM drive and start a new installation of Setup. -
Windows XP Home Edition startup disks will not work for Windows XP
Professional installations and vice-versa. - The installation program
will prompt you to provide formatted, 1.44MB floppy disks onto which the
installation program will copy its files.

The above takes much more time and effort than it took me with Win2K.
That one took very little effort to install.

There is a different link for a program to make a floppy if the XP
install CD you have is home instead of pro.

The Pro is what I have.

Thank you Mike for your help

 

[Pennywise]

The install depends upon it. It normally appears in the Root
(c:\txtsetup.sif) and dictates how the OS is installed.

My bad forgot to mention how it can be repaired.

When you start an install it copies all of the needed files to the
hard drive. When it reboots (the first time) stop the install (HIRENS boot
CD would work) and edit or replace c:\txtsetup.sif, then reboot to complete
the install.

Sound like you need a number first, you were really taken on this one.

 

[Seum]

My bad forgot to mention how it can be repaired.

When you start an install it copies all of the needed files to the
hard drive. When it reboots (the first time) stop the install (HIRENS boot
CD would work) and edit or replace c:\txtsetup.sif, then reboot to complete
the install.

Sound like you need a number first, you were really taken on this one.
--

How the Curiosity Mars Rover Will Land and Navigate,
cause nothing could possibly go wrong with this plan.

Thank you again PennyWise,

I searched my XP CD for txtsetup.sif and found it in the I386 folder.
It is a 464KB file and doesn't open readily.

I did a search and found :
http://shell.windows.com/fileassoc/0409/xml/redir.asp?EXT=sif

Lots of links below:

Download Adobe Reader 9.0
Open, Create & Edit any PDF File. (Highly Recommended)
www.Adobe.PDF-Format.com
Open File (Recommended)
Instantly Fix & Open .SIF File. Download Now - Takes 2 Minutes.
Open-Files-Now.com
Open File [Recommended]
Open .SIF Files Easily - Download Now!
Drivers-Updater.com
Open .sif [Recommended]
Open .sif files in 30 Seconds. Free Download. 100% Guaranteed.
FileHelp.net

http://173067.r.msn.com/?ld=4vF--Jn...z3FGSYZrFMH89XKGBZrQpm_0rVEycR8xhFjEIxl_gRuZQ

 

[Pennywise]

I searched my XP CD for txtsetup.sif and found it in the I386 folder.
It is a 464KB file and doesn't open readily.

LOL! Your txtsetup.sif claims it's corrupt and your having problems opening
it?

Section of a txtsetup.sif, Notepad drag and drop
"[WinntDirectories]
1 = "\"
2 = system32
3 = system32\config
4 = system32\drivers
5 = system
7 = system32\ras
9 = system32\spool
10 = system32\spool\drivers
11 = system32\spool\drivers\w32x86\3
12 = system32\spool\prtprocs
13 = system32\spool\prtprocs\w32x86
14 = system32\wins
15 = system32\dhcp"

I did a search and found :
http://shell.windows.com/fileassoc/0409/xml/redir.asp?EXT=sif

Well that site's worthless, I use Opera as my web browser and have a
shortcut of "EXT" to go to this site:

http://www.fileinfo.com/extension/sif
"Configuration file that contains setup information for Windows NT and XP;
contains parameters referenced during the Windows operating system
installation process;"

Lots of links below:
http://173067.r.msn.com~

Thanks for that, but I use Foxit reader.
You would be wise to uninstall "Adobe Download Manager"

XP's a hard one to pass files for, there are so many versions
http://www19.zippyshare.com/v/38225782/file.html is the
txtsetup.sif for single core XP Pro Corporate (Volume license version).
It was handy, uncompressed size is 461K as shown in windows explorer.

If you need one for XP pro multi core or XP 64 (Win2003) let me know, but I
figure you will run into more problems than just a bad txtsetup.sif file.

 

[Paul]

If you need one for XP pro multi core or XP 64 (Win2003) let me know, but I
figure you will run into more problems than just a bad txtsetup.sif file.

If the disc is a "bad xerox copy", it's probably going to fail
on some of the other 5000 files. Better to scan the CD and
get a general feeling for how well the current drive can read it.

Paul

 

[Seum]

I searched my XP CD for txtsetup.sif and found it in the I386 folder.
It is a 464KB file and doesn't open readily.

LOL! Your txtsetup.sif claims it's corrupt and your having problems opening
it?

Section of a txtsetup.sif, Notepad drag and drop
"[WinntDirectories]
1 = "\"
2 = system32
3 = system32\config
4 = system32\drivers
5 = system
7 = system32\ras
9 = system32\spool
10 = system32\spool\drivers
11 = system32\spool\drivers\w32x86\3
12 = system32\spool\prtprocs
13 = system32\spool\prtprocs\w32x86
14 = system32\wins
15 = system32\dhcp"

I did a search and found :
http://shell.windows.com/fileassoc/0409/xml/redir.asp?EXT=sif

OK, Thank you P.W.

Well that site's worthless, I use Opera as my web browser and have a
shortcut of "EXT" to go to this site:

http://www.fileinfo.com/extension/sif
"Configuration file that contains setup information for Windows NT and XP;
contains parameters referenced during the Windows operating system
installation process;"

I had this file already and a few others.

Thanks for that, but I use Foxit reader.
You would be wise to uninstall "Adobe Download Manager"

XP's a hard one to pass files for, there are so many versions
http://www19.zippyshare.com/v/38225782/file.html is the
txtsetup.sif for single core XP Pro Corporate (Volume license version).
It was handy, uncompressed size is 461K as shown in windows explorer.

If you need one for XP pro multi core or XP 64 (Win2003) let me know, but I
figure you will run into more problems than just a bad txtsetup.sif file.

XP single core and 32bits are enough for me.

Thanks again for your help