Pleeeeeasee Help

[northernmonkey]

I'm by no means a computer whizz and was hoping somebody could help me.

I am currently trying to clean install xp pro onto a computer and am having a few problems.

I am loading up onto a new partition. What size should this be? Should it be as large as possible or as small as possible? I want to use all of my harddrive which is 160gb.

The problem I am having is when windows 'copies files' during the installation. This is taking an absolute age. I mean hours to load. It gets stuck on files to copy and these tend to be the same ones each time.

Can anybody help me?????

[Paul K]

Have you checked your CD for marks? If it's sticking on the same files I would be suspicious of the disk.

[Xaccers]

If it's a complete fresh install, I normally pick the whole drive as I back all my files up to other computers.
However, if you think once you've finally got it working you might in the future need to do a wipe and reinstall again, take a rough guess as to how much space personal files that you'd want to keep (such as pics, mp3's, videos etc) are likely to be, and subtract that from the 160GB.
So if you recon you're going to need 100GB for personal data, create a partition of 60GB when doing the install, once that's done, in Windows create a second partition and keep all your personal data on there, so if you wipe the system it won't be lost.

Now, how genuine is your install CD?
I've done installs from non-kosher cd's and they've asked for specific files which are named slightly differently in the i386 folder.
Thankfully I had a second cd from a different source, and was able to complete the install by swapping between them.
How clean is it?

If it's a genuine copy and you've just bought it, see about getting an exchange if there are any marks on it.
Could also be your laser needs cleaning.

[northernmonkey]

Thanks guys.

I fear that the CD isn't too genuine. The problem is that I have lost the original disc which came with my PC.

I'll try cleaning the disc and starting again.

[Jon T]

Only thing I would add it that if it's stopping/stalling on the sames files time after time then it is likely to be the disk, but if it's different files each time then you may have a faulty memory stick.

[nffc]

Originally Posted by Jon T

Only thing I would add it that if it's stopping/stalling on the sames files time after time then it is likely to be the disk, but if it's different files each time then you may have a faulty memory stick.

... or HDD.

[Paul K]

CD being damaged is something that can be worked around as long as your Key is genuine

[j52c]

Originally Posted by Jon T

Only thing I would add it that if it's stopping/stalling on the sames files time after time then it is likely to be the disk, but if it's different files each time then you may have a faulty memory stick.

I once had a problem stalling on some files while doing a new install. Turned out I had a faulty memory stick.

[Paddy1]

I'd say it's more likely to be a faulty cd/dvd drive than memory or hard disk. Have you tried cleaning it? The fact that it sticks on the same files every time would rather point to dodgy media though.

[Jon T]

Like i've said before, if it sticks on different files, each time, then it's much more likely to be memory related than anything else, if it sticks on the same files each time then i'd say install media/optical drive.

Since Windows XP was released I must have installed it on 250-300 computers, in all but 2 instances of file copy failures where the failure point was different when install was repeated again the problem was due to memory failing. i the other 5 or 6 the hard drive was on its way out, and only 2 were due to a dodgy CD-ROM drive.

[Lord Nikon]

Originally Posted by northernmonkey

Thanks guys.

I fear that the CD isn't too genuine. The problem is that I have lost the original disc which came with my PC.

I'll try cleaning the disc and starting again.

And here we have the key, if the disc was a straight copy off an original windows CD, you will never get it to install, to make a successful backup off a MS windows CD you need to do the following (This is information used in slipstreaming an XP CD available from the microsoft website)

1) Create a folder on the hard drive called XP
2) Copy the contents of the XP CD to it
3) using ISO Buster, grab the boot image from the original CD (Yes, MS tell you to do this believe it or not)
4) merge the updates to your hard disk image of XP for example - if you have the network install for XP SP2 in a folder on your C: drive called XP-SP2 then
C:\XP-SP2\WindowsXP-KB835935-SP2-ENU.exe -x
C:\XP-SP2\i386\Update\Update.exe -S:C:\XP


5) Open Nero to burn the data back to CD, make a Data CD (Bootable)

boot image is the file you grabbed from ISOBuster, set the number of sectors to 4, and floppy emulation to Off
Drag and drop all the files from the XP Folder on the hard drive to the CD
Burn the disk


(This information shows how to back up and integrate service packs, drivers etc into a windows XP Install CD, you can also use nlite to do the job, this method STILL REQUIRES A VALID KEY and is publically available from microsoft's own servers, to slipstream service packs onto an XP CD is legal, saves download times and install times, and generally makes life easier, no Llamas were hurt in the making of this guide, For external use only, if symptoms persist, consult your local off license.)