XP-PRO-SP2 reinstallation "refresh" failure

[jim.bathurst]

Dell Optiplex 320 xp pro sp 2 system had explorer error on boot (along with a
shfolder.dll error from DRwatson) and would not boot except into safe command
mode. After reading, I decided to reinstall the xp sp2 OS on top of the
existing non-working OS in the c:\windows directory.



Reinstalled xp pro sp2 over the existing system and it does not complete. It
gets to about 29 minutes to complete and starts generating messages about not
being able to read files "name.dl_" or "name.ex_" from the I386 directory on
the cd rom. It does this for about 18-24 files. I skip these files,. let it
complete, but it will not boot.



If I look at the cd on a different computer, I can see the files that the
installation supposedly cannot use.



I tried this twice, with two different dell xp cd reinstall disks, same
result.



I moved the hard disk to a different identical optiplex to do the reinstall
(eliminating the cpu, memory, power supply, peripherials, etc) with a
different re-install disk - same problem - cannot read files at 29 minutes to
complete.



I ran disk diags - chkdsk and it reported the disk was OK.



Any help would be appreciated.



Thanks,



Jim

 

[DL]

You might want to run the hd checking utility available from the hd makers
site.
Maybe also a memory test www.memtest.org

 

[jim.bathurst]

DL,

Thanks,

I ran the builtin utility partition from dell on the memory and hard drive
for about 20 minutes and they passed muster.

Jim