File required from XP professional disc, CD drive not responding.

[mbk6452]

Hello, I started formatting my laptop and the CD was working fine to install windows on my hard drive. After the partition was made and windows was going through set up a message pops up saying it needs a file from the windows xp professional service pack 3 disc. Then it says that the 'asms' file is required but now my CD drive doesn't work. Even with a different disc. During start up before windows loads even if I press f12 for boot menu and try to manually boot the CD to reformat again and I don't get the press any key to boot cd option anymore. I am stuck in a loop and fairly confused. Thank you to anyone that has any knowledge to share

 

[MindoverMaster]

What type a XP CD is this? Retail? OEM? Upgrade? Recovery?

 

[mbk6452]

What type a XP CD is this? Retail? OEM? Upgrade? Recovery?

It's retail

 

[MindoverMaster]

Does it include SP3?

 

[mbk6452]

Does it include SP3?

Yeah it's SP3 but the issue is since I reformatted, windows hasn't finished installing because of a missing file and my CD drive will no longer boot any CD's.

 

[Lexluethar]

The booting from CD is weird because that's set in the BIOS. What manf. is your laptop (ie HP, Dell, etc). Depending on that will depend on how to get into the BIOS. Once there change your boot order to have your CD/DVD drive as the first boot device.

Once you are there try to reinstall windows. If after another install or two it still gives the same error try another disc (perhaps yours is scratched or dirty).

 

[mbk6452]

The booting from CD is weird because that's set in the BIOS. What manf. is your laptop (ie HP, Dell, etc). Depending on that will depend on how to get into the BIOS. Once there change your boot order to have your CD/DVD drive as the first boot device.

Once you are there try to reinstall windows. If after another install or two it still gives the same error try another disc (perhaps yours is scratched or dirty).

It's a pretty old laptop dell inspiron 6000. I already changed the boot to number 1 and even used a different install disc and it still will not boot the cd. The computer recognizes the CD drive but it won't boot a CD and I can't finish windows set up without it.

 

[Lexluethar]

So can you not even start the install process again because the drive won't boot the .ISO?

I would try another .ISO that you know works (test in another PC - just test that it boots off the .ISO on the CD then stop the process so you don't have to install windows on another machine).

It's really really weird that the PC won't even boot off of the .ISO. I get that windows didn't finish the installation and that you may need to start the install process again - that happens sometimes. What i don't get is how the CD drive won't even boot off the .ISO now - perhaps the drive is going out.

 

[imarc]

From my experience considering the age of the computer, it sounds like the drive is done. A good way to test this theory is to get any old bootable cd you know works, even bum from a friend and try it. But yea, I would say the cd drive is toast considering it first couldn't find a file then it doesn't boot anymore. Good luck with this!

 

[orlbuckeye]

One problem that users had that bought Vista machines and they wanted to move back to XP is the Vista laptops had a technology change moving from IDE to SATA drives. When XP was mainstream SATA drives didn't exist. The work around that people used was they had to install the SATA drivers before installing XP because XP only had IDE drivers.