W2K Setup - Unable to Copy - Invalid Windows Image

[Gavin Reynolds]

I recently tried to install W2K on to a PC I just received. It's previous
owner had Windows ME on it, so I decided to format it and install W2K.
When I tried to install at the stage in the bootable setup when it is
copying needed files from the CD to the HD, at around 70 - 80% setup starts
to throw up errors saying that some files are not valid windows images -
files such as ntoskrnl.exe and various other critical dll's and exe's.

If I press enter repeatedly to retry the file copy sometimes setup manages
to copy it correctly, but most of the time not. Ignoring the errors by
pressing escape does not help either.

I have tried installing 2k from the same CD on other computers, and even
onto a VMware virtual machine and setup works perfectly. I have also tried
installing from the CD-RW drive, which didn't help, and also replaced the CD
drive with one of my own, which I know works, but I still get the same
errors.

I then tried installing Win98 on the same PC with the original CD drive, and
it worked just fine, and I had 98 up and running in no time.
I then formatted the drive and tried to install WinXP.. not fully - only as
a test to see if I could get past copying files stage, yet the same errors
occurred.

I have also switched the two HD's around to see if there is sum fault with
the master one, but still the same problems with the drive that is normally
set to slave.

Any ideas?
Thanks
Gavin

Specs of the problem PC:
AMD Athlon 1200
Abit KT7 Motherboard
512 Mb Ram
1x 4Gb Seagate IDE HD - Master
1x 30Gb Samsung IDE HD - Slave
1x CD-ROM (Generic) 36x (Also tried another newer 52x Memorex drive)
1x TDK CD-RW 12x10x32x

 

[Ghostrider]

I recently tried to install W2K on to a PC I just received. It's previous
owner had Windows ME on it, so I decided to format it and install W2K.
When I tried to install at the stage in the bootable setup when it is
copying needed files from the CD to the HD, at around 70 - 80% setup starts
to throw up errors saying that some files are not valid windows images -
files such as ntoskrnl.exe and various other critical dll's and exe's.

If I press enter repeatedly to retry the file copy sometimes setup manages
to copy it correctly, but most of the time not. Ignoring the errors by
pressing escape does not help either.

<<snipped>>

Installation of Windows 2000 can be a bit tricky at times.
Because this is an AMD machine that might use a "soft" bios
setting for the CPU speed, re-configure the bios settings to
just the machine defaults plus allowing to boot and run setup
from the CD drive.