Oh I'm screwed over a laptop I'm trying to fix.

[Harsky]

Today was another "hey, can you please format and installed XP on my laptop" request. Being the bored person, I agreed and took it in. It was a Compaq Armada M700. First thing I did was turn it on and all of a sudden, a ton of "FILES MISSING" messages kept popping up. So I thought "forget this" and went straight to inserting a disc, resetting it and going through formatting it. But when it went to the installing Windows XP part, I got a "Setup cannot copy ______". I skipped that. Then suddenly another CANNOT COPY. And another. And another. It was at that point that the HDD was formatted but I cannot install XP on it. Any ideas?

 

[Dominator]

sorry i don't now ..........


but breack you xp cd-rom and buy or download LINUX


LINUW POWA crosoft papelita......

 

[Harsky]

sorry i don't now ..........


but breack you xp cd-rom and buy or download LINUX


LINUW POWA crosoft papelita......

This isn't for me. It's for one of those old people trying to get into computing.

 

[Dominator]

hum sorry but its possible there is a fat32 error

 

[iTech]

I had the same thing happen to me once. I think it has something to do with the HAL which is invoked during setup. Someone requested an XP install, on a PC, and I used my XP Home edition CD - but setup kept failing while it always worked on my computers. Luckily, I had another XP disc - Home Edition Service Pack 1, which installed flawlessly.

So, get a different, if possible higher version of WinXP and try again.

 

[Harsky]

I had the same thing happen to me once. I think it has something to do with the HAL which is invoked during setup. Someone requested an XP install, on a PC, and I used my XP Home edition CD - but setup kept failing while it always worked on my computers. Luckily, I had another XP disc - Home Edition Service Pack 1, which installed flawlessly.

So, get a different, if possible higher version of WinXP and try again.

Well, I went through a "download as much XP ISO as possible phase". First one I tried was a XP Professional. That gave the error. Second one was also an XP Pro. Also failed. Then I used the one I normally use when which was a Home OEM disc. Also gave an error.

 

[ShadowXP]

Could the disk drive be fucked at all? Sounds like it can't read the disk properly to copy the files..

 

[iTech]

What happened in my case was that setup would freeze after copying a specific amount of files, forcing me to reboot.
You're probably being prompted to shut down your computer and try again, which on second thought isn't exactly the same as what happened to me.
I believe the only two possibilities here then are a hard drive or CD/DVD drive defect. Run chkdsk and see if there are any corrupt sectors, then rewrite the MBR. If it doesn't fix it and if you have an external HDD, I suggest trying to install it on there and see if what works. Otherwise, try doing a network boot. You should be able to single out the defect this way.

 

[ozzyzak]

The person you're working this for is aware that you are giving him an illegitimate copy of XP right? It would be the right thing to tell him if not.

 

[Harsky]

The person you're working this for is aware that you are giving him an illegitimate copy of XP right? It would be the right thing to tell him if not.

Pretty much.

 

[nintendofreak]

Say, are you doing a quick format?

Its probably something wrong with the hard drive... Got one that you can swap in? Sounds like the hdd is messed up... Your saying that it didnt work before you tried to install anything, right?

 

[Harsky]

Say, are you doing a quick format?

Its probably something wrong with the hard drive... Got one that you can swap in? Sounds like the hdd is messed up... Your saying that it didnt work before you tried to install anything, right?

It's a 12gb HDD and I tried NTSF and NTSF Quick Format and they still gave me "cannot copy files messages". I am absolutely sure that the disc isn't scratched beyond working because it's always worked on a ton of other PCs I worked on.

There was another problem when I turned it on for the first time the mouse touch pad on the laptop doesn't respond at all. Plugging in USB mouse doesn't work and I don't have the old stlye mouse with the old connectors. Funny how when I turned the laptop on, it shows Windows XP but when I turned the laptop over, I saw something that gave me horrible flashbacks. It was originally installed with Windows 2000.

 

[Mangofett]

At least it wasn't installed with ME.

 

[nintendofreak]

Sounds like a VERY old laptop... Might not even support XP!!! How much ram does it have???

If possible, install windows 95/98

 

[Jiggah]

The "cannot copy" error sounds like a problem with the RAM. It's having problems retrieving and sending the info that gets stored in the RAM, which I believe is what the XP installer uses during the whole bootup install process.

Also, ask around for the original disks that came with the laptop. Try those to restore a factory default. I know that it's a pretty crappy option, but they might have utilities that can help you recover a drive, which is better than nothing. As the guy posted above said, it sounds a lot like the laptop is really old, which means XP would be useless on the laptop. I can't remember how much XP takes up on an initial install, but I think it's about 9 gigs of space, that more than half the drive already. I recalled 95/98/ME took somewhere around 2 gigs.

 

[nintendofreak]

I know from experience that it CAN run on 128mb of Ram... But for a laptop with 12gb HDD, i doubt it even has 64mb

 

[delta123]

dont do a quick format, do a full format, that will seed out the bad sectors on the disc. and get rid of a lot stuff you dont know, like boot information. then try again. if that doesnt work then install windows 2000.