ok, so i have an "illegal" copy of XP Pro and today I bought a "real" copy. BUT... it wont install over it self (wont "upgrade" to identical program) so i booted from the cd and tried a fresh install (which deletes the old copy and starts to write the new one in. BUT..... it stops halfway through the install with an error along the lines of "cannot install necessary files. may be bad disk, blah, blah, blah." once i close the error ballons it reboots and restarts setup. and the cycle continues. i cannot get it out of setup. i tried manually shutting down the computerand turning it back on, i tried starting it in safe mode (which returned the message "setup cannot continue in safe mode" and reboots into setup.....), ad i tried putting an old win 2k disk in which just prompts me for the xp disk. WTF!!!!!!!?????????!!!!!!!!????????????  Any ideas?  i'm gettin pissed and frustrated.

Quoted: ok, so i have an "illegal" copy of XP Pro and today I bought a "real" copy. BUT... it wont install over it self (wont "upgrade" to identical program) so i booted from the cd and tried a fresh install (which deletes the old copy and starts to write the new one in. BUT..... it stops halfway through the install with an error along the lines of "cannot install necessary files. may be bad disk, blah, blah, blah." once i close the error ballons it reboots and restarts setup. and the cycle continues. i cannot get it out of setup. i tried manually shutting down the computerand turning it back on, i tried starting it in safe mode (which returned the message "setup cannot continue in safe mode" and reboots into setup.....), ad i tried putting an old win 2k disk in which just prompts me for the xp disk. WTF!!!!!!!?????????!!!!!!!!????????????  Any ideas?  i'm gettin pissed and frustrated.

When you're going through the setup do you delete the partition and have it format everything over again? If not, try that. Should fix the problem.

You might look at the CD and make shure its clean.

Buy a mac

You didn't need to reinstall the whole OS, you could have just changed the Product Key.

Quoted: When you're going through the setup do you delete the partition and have it format everything over again? If not, try that. Should fix the problem.

A person with Tux as their avatar giving advice about Windows.

But I do have to agree with you, delete the partitions, if not you might have a faulty disk.

Quoted: Quoted: ok, so i have an "illegal" copy of XP Pro and today I bought a "real" copy. BUT... it wont install over it self (wont "upgrade" to identical program) so i booted from the cd and tried a fresh install (which deletes the old copy and starts to write the new one in. BUT..... it stops halfway through the install with an error along the lines of "cannot install necessary files. may be bad disk, blah, blah, blah." once i close the error ballons it reboots and restarts setup. and the cycle continues. i cannot get it out of setup. i tried manually shutting down the computerand turning it back on, i tried starting it in safe mode (which returned the message "setup cannot continue in safe mode" and reboots into setup.....), ad i tried putting an old win 2k disk in which just prompts me for the xp disk. WTF!!!!!!!?????????!!!!!!!!????????????  Any ideas?  i'm gettin pissed and frustrated. When you're going through the setup do you delete the partition and have it format everything over again? If not, try that. Should fix the problem.

Yup try that, if that doesn't work get a disk wipe program and run it two or three times.

Quoted: Quoted: When you're going through the setup do you delete the partition and have it format everything over again? If not, try that. Should fix the problem. A person with Tux as their avatar giving advice about Windows. But I do have to agree with you, delete the partitions, if not you might have a faulty disk.

My usual recommendation is to ditch XP and go with linux, but for some reason I gathered it wouldn't help him in this particular situation.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: When you're going through the setup do you delete the partition and have it format everything over again? If not, try that. Should fix the problem. A person with Tux as their avatar giving advice about Windows. But I do have to agree with you, delete the partitions, if not you might have a faulty disk. My usual recommendation is to ditch XP and go with linux, but for some reason I gathered it wouldn't help him in this particular situation.

I can tell by your title line.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: When you're going through the setup do you delete the partition and have it format everything over again? If not, try that. Should fix the problem. A person with Tux as their avatar giving advice about Windows. But I do have to agree with you, delete the partitions, if not you might have a faulty disk. My usual recommendation is to ditch XP and go with linux, but for some reason I gathered it wouldn't help him in this particular situation. I can tell by your title line.

I do still use XP, particularly for gaming. Half life/counterstrike etc will run on linux, but I haven't been able to get any more modern games to behave quite right yet..

NEVER BELEIVE THIS...... its installing now! let it run, ejected it, then threw it right back in for no logical reason other than anger, and it started going. no kidding.  Anyway, to answer the replys for shits...I was just gonna do a key change but i figured "hey, might as well run a fresh install in case theres  newer files on it".  Didnt want to wipe the partition cuz theres other stuff on it. Love Linux, but I'm too impatient to really go nuts with it and too much software is still windows dependant.

Anyway, thanks for trying to help with such speed. "A" for effort!

Just a FYI, get some partitioning software and make your HD into two partitions.  One for Windows and one for all the other stuff that you don't want to lose on a reformat every 6 months.  Then, every 6 months, format and reinstall Windows on the Windows partition.  Not only does this get rid of any and all viruses/spyware/worms/etc, it also cleans out all the extraneous crap that Windows likes to write files for.  Ever noticed why the HD space on the Windows drive keeps going down, even after backing up all the files?

thats kinda what i did ( i have 3 HDD's partitioned into 7 drives) but you gotta count for all the drivers and crap you gotta redo. time consuming!