XP installation

[Guest]

I've been trying to install XP and 2k on two computers at my workplace. A
total of 7 cds, ranging from burned copies to originals. Copies of 2k, XP pro
with and without sp. Even a simple eval copy of 2k.

Every installation I've tried so far ends up stopping with a problem. When
it starts copying files over during the installation it comes up with a
random dll file missing. Its different every time; for any cd i use. For the
past two hours I've been trying to use an original XP pro with sp1 disc. And
it came up with a differenet missing dll every time.

Once during the installation it made it all the way to the windows portion
of the installation, but upon reaching the device installation phase, it
crashed. Corrupting the HAL. So going back to square one, I re-started. The
installation would stop on some files, and it would continue on with no
problem when I hit enter. The installation would completely stop when it just
oculdn't find that particular dll.

The first computer crashed about 7 times during the installation. Either
during the files being copied or even during the NTFS format. Including the
crash corrupting the HAL, as I stated earlier. The second computer didn't
crash at all, but it never got far into the copy portion of the installation.

Both computers are about a 4 to 5 years old. They both meet or excede the
min requirements to install XP. They both have a dvd and cd-r drive. The 2nd
computer recently got its HDD replaced a day ago. And so thinking that maybe
all four of the optical drives were bad I dropped in a brand new cd-r drive,
and still developed problems like before. Always a random dll file missing or
cant be found.

So Im pretty much frustrated at this, cuz I've never had this problem before
out of a hundred or so OS installations I've done in my life. Anyone know
what could be going wrong?

 

[gerryf]

Dirty or fault cd-rom readers?

Have you tried a cd-rom cleaner?

I had a couple of similar issues with machines and nothing worked

Two methods that you could still try and that worked for me in these odd
cases:

Format the drives with a windows 98 boot floppy, reboot, load with cd-rom
support, create an install directory, copy the contents of the i386
directory...install from the harddrive
Sometimes, the cd-rom reader will function better under DOS.

--or--
put the harddrive in another machine, format it, then copy the i386
directory over, put it back in original machine, use a boot disk to get
things started and then install from the harddrive

---or ---
Set up a remote installation server if your computers support it