Stuck in setup loop

[Al Eaton]

I was having problems with my computer. I am not sure if it is a hardware
(hard drive) problem or a corrupt file or what. Running Norton antivirus
would eventually cause the system to reboot with a blue screen warning.
This is not the standard blue screen however. It is a screen full of text
saying that Windows has encountered an error and thinks it best to shout
down. The screen disappears and the system reboots before you have a chance
to read the whole screen. In safe mode I got a system error that just said
Hard Error. I decided to try to reinstall
WIN XP from safe mode. Windows got to the "Installing Windows" part of the
install and gave me an error

the signature for Windows Professional upgrade is invalid the error code is
fffffc06
the system cannot find message text number 0xfffffc06 in the message file
syssetup.dll
setup failed to install the product catalogs. this is a fatal error

After you click OK the system reboots and tries to run install again with
the same result.

I am at a loss as to what to do at this point.

WIN XP Pro
P4 2.4 Ghz
1GB Ram
2 x 80 GB Maxtor HD on a RAID 0 array

 

[Walter Clayton]

Don't do installs in safe mode. Actually in this instance you shouldn't even
be thinking about a system reinstall since the problem is strictly with an
application. What you should have done was addressed the NAV issue itself
and left the system alone. Reinstall is a last ditch effort to recovery a
situation that has truly gone south. Regardless you've pretty much committed
to the reinstall and should follow through. Note that under the
circumstances you may loose some functionality, will have to reinstall all
security patches, including SP1 if you've installed it and in all
probability you'll still be left with a dysfunctional NAV.

Boot the XP CD and get into recovery console. Disable all NAV services (see
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314058 for more
information on recovery console specifically). You'll have to figure out
what the NAV services are that you have installed. Once you've done that,
then reboot the CD and begin a repair reinstall. Once that's completed then
uninstall NAV and reinstall NAV. If NAV is still problematic, then check
with NAV tech support.

--
Walter Clayton - MS MVP(WinXP)
Associate Expert
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
http://www.dts-l.org
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