cant reinstall windows xp

justsomeguy · Post by **justsomeguy** » Mon Mar 22, 2004 12:39 am

recently after trying to swap a 200gb hd and a 20 gb hd, the other 200gb hd wouldn't work so i tried reinstalling windows on one of the partitions. it worked fine, but when i restarted it it said after the xp pro logo screen, that the follwoing file is either missing or corrupted
\windows\system32\config\system
and it told me to boot up with the xp insal disk and try repairing it by pressing r on the first screen.
i pressed r and i found the file was there. i tried installing windwos on the new 200 gb drive and got the bsod. i copied the file from the second hd to the old 200 drive and i got the same bsod. it said that the hard drive was meesued up and o check for viruses, remove any new hard drives or controllers, and run chkdsk. STOP: 0x0000007B
so i removed the nbew hard drive, smae bsod; ran chkdsk, and iut said the drive was fine, still got bsod.
also the i tried installing windows on the old 20 gb hd wich had had linux on it, and it said the same file was missing or corrupted. any ideas?

Raptor · Post by **Raptor** » Mon Mar 22, 2004 12:49 am

Sounds like a corrupt partition table from some of the Lilo boot loader from Linux still hanging around.
Some fixes we've been able to use successfully..
From acommand prompt ( the XP recovery console run from the install disk will get you there ) the run
FDISK /MBR
this will restore the master boot record
If that doesn't work, then you can find one of the debug scripts on the Internet to run it, or blank the disk with Partition Magic, or using a utility from the Hard Drive Manufacturer.
I would guess the HD which held Linux is the Master Drive on teh Primary IDE channel. You may be able to put the 200 on as the Primary Master, install Xp and go merrrily along. It doesn't matter which drive you actually install the OS to, the computer's Bios will always look at a physical location on the Primary Master for the boot record to actually start loading whatever OS is being used. We have to slam drives quite often after a class finishes their Linux course.

justsomeguy · Post by **justsomeguy** » Mon Mar 22, 2004 3:17 am

i think you mean FIXMBR, right? well, hopefull, cuz thats what i did. im formating the partition now and then hopefully it'll install. i cant just put the 200 inb it as the primary master, ive already tried that, same results.

EDIT: ok, it worked, kinda, not really. now i can get to the instal screen for xp but then it says:
"An error has been encountered that prevents seup from continuing.
Setup failed to install the product catalogs. this is a fatal error. the setup logs should contain more information. "
so i go to the logs and it says:
"the digital signature catalog H:\I386\nt5.cat could not be installed. error code is fffffc06
The system cannot find message text for message 0xfffffc06 in syssetup.dll
the signature for windows xp professional is invalid."
what does this mean and how can i get it working?

EDIT2: nevermind i guess that error was just so it could scare me cuz the rest of the install went perfect and its up and runnning now, thanks so much!!

justsomeguy · Post by **justsomeguy** » Mon Mar 22, 2004 5:58 am

theres still one pretty big problem. whenever i restart i have to do the FIXMBR thing all over again or else it will give the error about the file being miising or corrupt

Raptor · Post by **Raptor** » Mon Mar 22, 2004 6:09 am

Look up the error code at support.microsoft.com \in the knowledge base...

justsomeguy · Post by **justsomeguy** » Mon Mar 22, 2004 6:17 am

it doesn't give me an error code. but now its even worse, after the xp logo, it just restarts and wont boot up at all. getting extremely frustrated!

Truggy · Post by **Truggy** » Fri Mar 26, 2004 2:43 pm

take it to a comp store...

justsomeguy · Post by **justsomeguy** » Sat Mar 27, 2004 6:13 am

well it looks like im going to (i was gonna do this anyway so dontthink im going a little extreme) buya new mb and load windows on the new hard drive w/ just that hd in the comp. i looking for one from newegg. oh and by the way, i got it to boot up[ again on he old 200 and about half of windows was on the comp, like there was no start menu but there was a lttle line at the bottom, explorer.exe was not running and would not run. i reinstalled windows on that drive and got the same didgital signature error catalogue thing. but this time it restarted instead of continuing w/ the install, same result on other drive.