Reformat and install problem.

[Guest]

I recently received a Dell Optiplex Gx400 with Windows 2000 Professional
installed, however the pc had a password that i did not have because the unit
was a throw away. So i deceded to reformat the hard drive and install WinXp
Home Edition, and went well until it started to copy the neccesary files to
install WinXp. After loading about 12 percent of the program an error message
appears on the screen saying certain files could not be copied to the hard
drive. The program gave me a choice to press enter to retry to install the
file again or press the escape key to skip the file or press F3 to exit the
installation. I have search all over the net to find a answer to this problem
any suggestions or solutions to this problem would greatly apreciated.

 

[peter]

This happened on my old Dell Laptop which I had purchased used ...same
thing could not install.
I finally used Bootit NG to format the old OS out of existance and formatted
the drive as FAT32
Then when Installing XP I found that if I did not format with XP it would
give me the Files not copied message...but once I formatted to NTFS during
the installation with XP then all went well.
who knows why...I just know it worked for me

peter