Installition woes

My wife let her norton antivirus expire and her machine got a worm having just upgraded her to 1 gig of ram and from on board vid to a AGP geforce 4 512 meg vid card a couple of weeks ago I decided to replace her 20 gig hd with a bigger one and reinstall windows I keep getting errors when win starts to copy files I get 70 to 85 % copied and it hangs up on no file in paticular I have tried 3 different windows disks one brand new (I have legal numbers for all my windows disks by the way) and 3 different cd drives (all used ) my question are all of these cd drives bad?? or is there something else going on hte hard drive is a brand new maxxtor 100 gig from staples the cd drives are all generic various brands all jumpers set to CS some one help
mo bo machspeed V2DP via chipset
processor simperon 2300+
i gig 333 ram

 

you think?

Are you sure ? this seems more like a cd drive issue to me I have the disk that came with the drive arew the utilities on it ? Im at work so I cant look do you think the partition idea will work?
Jeff

 

Question

thanks for responding pete
I think this problem is a read problem, (i will be the first to admit i might be wrong) but the error reads that windows cant read file blah blah blah if you are installiing from a cd check your cd ect... makes no refrence to not being able to write it to the HD i will run the disk utilities tonight, by the way all of the cd drives i used were ones from my junk drawer so who knows theree condidion. what do you think about putting the HD into a usb enclosure plugging into my good pc and partitioning the HD into C and D and copying the win install disk into the D partition and install it into the C partition from there will that work??
thanks again for the help
Jeff

 

oops

Sorry about the omission yes this appears to be a read error I will try rejumpering the drives could you give me a primmer on cables I just used the existing ones sorry about the newbie s**t I just havent ******* around a lot with ribbon cables I know there are differances but I have not had to encounter them yet
thanks again
Jeff

 

same problem?

I posted this below, so maybe it will help here:

I have had this same problem with several different computers on which I tried to install Windows XP Pro.

Here is my problem:
1. I have 2 AMD Athlon 1 GHz computers, a Sony Vaio PCV-RX450 and a more generic Micron. Ironically, both computers use Award Medallion Bios from about 2000.

2. On both computers, I can install Windows 98/ME. But when I try to install Windows XP, I get a whole bunch of errors saying a certain file cannot be copied correctly. After hitting escape to ignore most of these files, I get to about 50 to 75% and then get a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD).

3. I have tried different hard drives in both these machines. I have tried completely different RAM. I have tried 2 legal copies of Windows XP Professional -- 1 is an upgrade version with SP1, and one is a full version with SP2.

4. I have been able to use these same disks (I used the SP2 disk) recently on a Gateway Pentium 3, 500 Mhz computer, with no trouble at all. It is not connected to the internet and is only a test computer, so the problem is not a licensing issue.

5. I have had similar problems in the past (on a Systemax Pentium 3 900mhz), but I attributed it to a major system error that resulted in an explorer.exe error and messed up the computer. The SONY VAIO also had a major error, probably an explorer.exe error as well, that killed the original XP installation, so I thought a reinstallation would work. I have since installed Windows ME on the SONY without problem. The Micron has no known errors, but I got it loaded with Redhat Linux and reformatted the drive.

6. There does not appear to be any particular pattern of files that are unable to be copied, so I have not made note of those.

7. I have reset the bios on each computer. On the Sony, I flashed new bios, but I'm not sure that the flash worked. But I still had the same problem. My last attempt at installation was hung up on 11% files copied, on the driver.cab file.

8. I think this is a fairly common problem, any ideas?

 

still no joy help PETE

I have 80 wire ribbon cables have the drives jumpered master and slave bios sees them as so, but I still have read errors when windows is "copying files" can I copy the win xp disk to the new, blank formatted (ntfs) hard drive (which checks iut fine with diags) and run setup from there. The ms kb says you can do that on an upgrade but this is a freash install please help I dont want to pay to get this fixed
Jeff

 

update

Changed to another cd drive still read error set the bios to "load optiumized paramiters" still no joy I tried changing windows cd's when it hung on a file but it dtill wont copy the file its hung on it never stops on the same file twice I am almost thinking motherboard I have the cd on primary master and the HDD on secondary master I am going to switch the pri and sec ribbon cables and try it edit: I tried this and no joy I did notice that once the files start to not read very few of the subiquent files copy (Read error) IM gonna reformat a spare HD and try it again
Jeff

 

still no good

I am beginning to think that this is some kind of mobo prob I tried another HD I stll cant get the files copied this s***s like I cant believe
Jeff

 

Hey Jeff ........

Was just reading through your thread and would strongly concur with Pete re: going back to your former memory configuration. Also have another thought since you mentioned having that MachSpeed motherboard - check your capacitors for any signs of bulging or leaking. I used a few of these boards a while back based upon a wholesaler's recommendation and they ran into a bunch of bad caps on select models. Hate to pop your bubble if this is the case but that "lifetime warranty" is everything but.

 

Eureka !!!!!!!!!

I cannot believe that bad memory could do this I have been fooling arround with computers and windows since the commodore days and this is the first time that I have had a problem like this can someone please explain to me how bad memory can cause a read error in win xp setup, any way I plan to reinstall the defective mem modules (2 512k's ) when the installation finished then I will run the windows memory tools mentioned in the previous posts and see if this is a running issue or a installation issue any comments please reply to this post. I would like to thank everyonr who responded to my pleas for help this board is a valuable resourse and I truly appriciate it
Jeff

P.S. I found 1 defective 512 mem module