Problem Doing A Repair Installation

[Tim]

Here is the deal. I booted up last night and i got an
error that some of my files were corrupted and i needed
to reinstall XP. I did that and everything was fine. I
rebooted later and I got the same error. I went to
reinstall again except i now get an error message. The
error is "Failed To Install Product catalog. Fatal Error.
Installation will cease." Or something like that. It says
unable to write Internet Explorer 6.0. I looked in the
knowledge base and found an article on renaming my
Catroot2 Folder which I did and got the same problem. It
also says i might have bad RAM, so i switch my sticks
around and in different slots but get the same thing.
Does anyone know of this error or is there a way to
cancel the installation cause when ever i restart it
tries to complete the installation. Any help would be
appreciated.

Tim

 

[sgopus]

Your hard drive maybe giving you the old evil eye, ready
to say bye bye...

 

[Miss Perspicacia Tick]

Here is the deal. I booted up last night and i got an
error that some of my files were corrupted and i needed
to reinstall XP. I did that and everything was fine. I
rebooted later and I got the same error. I went to
reinstall again except i now get an error message. The
error is "Failed To Install Product catalog. Fatal Error.
Installation will cease." Or something like that. It says
unable to write Internet Explorer 6.0. I looked in the
knowledge base and found an article on renaming my
Catroot2 Folder which I did and got the same problem. It
also says i might have bad RAM, so i switch my sticks
around and in different slots but get the same thing.
Does anyone know of this error or is there a way to
cancel the installation cause when ever i restart it
tries to complete the installation. Any help would be
appreciated.

Tim

If the RAM itself is failing, what on earth did you hope to achieve by
merely switching slots?! The only way you're going to eliminate this
possibility is by purchasing some new RAM and trying it (be sure it's
identical to the old RAM). What did you think would happen - that by
switching slots the RAM would miraculously 'heal' itself?!

Personally, it sounds to me as though your drive is failing. If you have any
critical data, *BACK IT UP NOW*! Purchase a new drive and try installing XP
to that. Installation is a very drive-intensive process (obviously). The
more times you install on a failing drive you shorten the MTBF (mean time
before failure) dramatically. Purchase another drive - *TODAY* and install
Windows. If you cannot access the drive to salvage your data, you may be
able to access it by hooking the drive up as a slave. Slave drives don't
take as big a hammering as masters, so this may give you enough time to copy
the data across to a partition of the new drive.

As you thought that switching your RAM around would miraculously fix the
issue, I suggest you don't tackle this yourself - as it would be beyond your
capabilities.