I have recently had to replace the hard drive and cd rom drives from a computer at work. I am attempting to put XP Pro on the hard drive which I have done a hundred times before.

The problem is, after booting from the windows setup CD and creating a boot partition, the windows setup fails at about the 40% mark stating that it can not copy certain files.

What the hell could be causing this? I have tried multiple setup disks to see if it was a damaged CD but its not.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

11/14/2007 11:28:19 AM

How is the installation failing? Is there any error output?

11/14/2007 11:34:57 AM

Are you using a brand new hard drive? Either way try a different one if you can. Same thing for the cd-rom.

if that doesnt work and you have multiple memory sticks, try it with one or the other.

i'm assuming you're telling the windows setup program to format the entire hard drive before copying install files right?

11/14/2007 11:37:11 AM

well right now I am at the 31% mark


I will post the error when it comes up but its basically along the lines that a system file cannot be copied and it gives me the option to skip, retry or exit


this is a brand new hard drive - right out of the box as of an hour ago

the cd rom has been removed and replaced with a different one that works fine

[Edited on November 14, 2007 at 11:38 AM. Reason : .]

11/14/2007 11:37:50 AM

try switching IDE channels


and putting the CD-ROM on a channel by itself.




then run diagnostics on the HDD. just because it's new, doesn't mean it's not broken.

11/14/2007 11:42:19 AM

i ran a hard disk utility check already and it passed


how do i switch IDE channels

[Edited on November 14, 2007 at 11:47 AM. Reason : in teh Bios?]

11/14/2007 11:45:45 AM

I've had this issue twice and never have figured out why. The same CD would install fine on 50 computers then on this one laptop no windows CD would work. It'd also not be able to find the same files for some reason on every disc even though I checked and they were def there. I think I ended up making a bootable USB stick and got it to install that way... but still it's really really weird and sounds like the same thing you're going through

[Edited on November 14, 2007 at 11:49 AM. Reason : asdf]

11/14/2007 11:48:21 AM

how did you make the bootable USB drive?

11/14/2007 11:50:01 AM

i just noticed during a system test that some of the memory failed a stress test....



would this cause windows to fail during a setup?

I wouldn't think it would...

[Edited on November 14, 2007 at 12:24 PM. Reason : cmon fellas, where are the CSC people?]

11/14/2007 12:20:18 PM

yes, memory errors do all kinds of things

11/14/2007 12:24:03 PM

Diagnostic of system memory revealed the following:

Memory data data bus stress test failure - error code - 2F2F:0B1C

System memory failure: Read FFFFFFDFh, expected FFFFFFFh at address 220A45C8h. Suspected memory component located on system board at labels Bank2/3 A1. - error code - 2F2F:0119



[Edited on November 14, 2007 at 12:37 PM. Reason : im going to add more as it comes up]

11/14/2007 12:25:00 PM

is it stopping at the exact same spot everytime?

11/14/2007 12:38:16 PM

the install?

11/14/2007 12:41:57 PM

Quote :

"if that doesnt work and you have multiple memory sticks, try it with one or the other."

did you do this like i posted above?

11/14/2007 1:38:43 PM

working on it now

11/14/2007 1:43:55 PM

update it was solely the memory causing the problem

replaced the chips with new ones, ram utility tests and they passed and installed windows

[Edited on November 14, 2007 at 2:49 PM. Reason : thanks for the help]

11/14/2007 2:48:54 PM

I have seen this happen specifically with memory issues. Especially with dual channel setups on 939 mobos. Annoying as hell...

11/14/2007 3:37:18 PM

well actually one of the gig chips failed but it was under warranty so we sent it back yesterday and newegg is sending us a new one


newegg is awesome

11/15/2007 9:55:48 AM