Can't Install Operating System

[john2562]

i'm going to assume you have a poorly copied pirate CD or your hard drive has bad sectors.. Missing file errors are caused by one of the two.



best thing to do if you have a Copy of an xp cd is go and buy a real one, better support in the longrun, and you can upgrade to sp3 when it's released without a hitch

can also be a bad cd drive, or loose cables.. Sometimes memory.. but generally system won't boot/randomly restarts when memory is bad.

No I bought the actual XP disk. What does bad sectors on the hard drive mean? Should I consider getting a new hard drive.

 

[Juice Daddy]

go to start>run
then type chkdsk /f

and say (Y)es to schedual a chkdsk to run at startup...

if it takes forever, then you probably have a corrupt hd...


EDIT:

Originally posted by kiyotaka
can also be a bad cd drive, or loose cables.. Sometimes memory.. but generally system won't boot/randomly restarts when memory is bad.

 

[john2562]

have you recieved any BSOD's? sometimes freezing and format/install problems are caused by failing IDE drives. i know on more than one occasion i have tried to run a clean install because of problems with the OS (not real problems apparently :O) and then had a ****load of problems re-installing and formatting. these problems eventually came down to a failing optical drive or hdd.

What is BSOD's? Also what I am gatering from everyone is that basically I would have to try a new hard drive, optical drive, memory, IDE drives, or a new operating system disk. I would basically be building a new computer. This really sucks!!!

 

[john2562]

have you recieved any BSOD's? sometimes freezing and format/install problems are caused by failing IDE drives. i know on more than one occasion i have tried to run a clean install because of problems with the OS (not real problems apparently :O) and then had a ****load of problems re-installing and formatting. these problems eventually came down to a failing optical drive or hdd.

What is BSOD's? Also what I am gathering from everyone is that basically I would have to try a new hard drive, optical drive, memory, IDE drives, or a new operating system disk. I would basically be building a new computer. This really sucks!!!

 

[Juice Daddy]

calm down... thats not what people are saying, if you were to build a new computer, you would need a lot more than a new hd, cables, and optical drive, etc...

BSOD = blue screen of death

 

[john2562]

Ok. It just seems like alot of stuff to consider.

 

[Juice Daddy]

so... did the computer have windows XP on it before?
or did you buy a new xp cd and want to put it on an old computer...

someone mentioned memory - I have worked on old computers before and on one of them I couldn't install windows xp untill I added more memory because I kept getting the BSOD(blue screen of death)

another thing you could check is if the cables from the motherboard to the hard drive and cd drive have not come loose...(although I doubt it, one or more of these cables may have gone bad)

also, although you said the xp cd is new, make sure there aren't any scratches...
if the cd is ok, it might be down to ram, cd drive, or hard drive...

could you post the specs of your computer...

processor type/speed, MB of ram, HD compacity, etc...

 

[jesu]

Try to do low level format in to your hdd then you istall

 

[john2562]

Try to do low level format in to your hdd then you istall

What is a low level format? How do I do it?

 

[john2562]

so... did the computer have windows XP on it before?
or did you buy a new xp cd and want to put it on an old computer...

someone mentioned memory - I have worked on old computers before and on one of them I couldn't install windows xp untill I added more memory because I kept getting the BSOD(blue screen of death)

another thing you could check is if the cables from the motherboard to the hard drive and cd drive have not come loose...(although I doubt it, one or more of these cables may have gone bad)

also, although you said the xp cd is new, make sure there aren't any scratches...
if the cd is ok, it might be down to ram, cd drive, or hard drive...

could you post the specs of your computer...

processor type/speed, MB of ram, HD compacity, etc...

Yes. My computer had XP on it before. I disconnected most everything in my computer and put it all back together. The computer identifies everything, but when it starts it still shows the windows XP setup and it still states that it is missing files. There are some minor scrathes on the XP disk. Also when I tried to boot from the cd drive it will not work. Maybe I should try a new cd drive.

My computer specs:

Dell
Intel 1.7 GHz
samsung 2x256MB RDRAM
Hitachi 80GB hard drive