Installation problem

Question

I'll try to shorten a long story.

My laptop crashed; I had to wipe/reformat the hard drive.  I've done both quick and full reformats. 

When I try to load Windows XP Professional, I get a 'cyclic redundancy check' error.

When Setup restarts, it asks for the XP Professional Service Pack 2 CD.  I downloaded that from Microsoft and put it in the drive.

The Setup process 'recognizes' the CD and apparently copies (or tries) some files.

Then, I get a 'Fatal Error: Untranslatable msg, Win32LastError is 14001'.

Does anyone know what I am missing?

Tom

Answer 1

Do you have the answer or are you just replying to my post to admonish me? If you have the answer, I would love to hear it. I don't see what the age of the original post has to do with this as long as this same issue persists.

I have been Googling for a day now. I've found hundreds if threads on this very same question but not one of them had a resolution that works. If I even got a hint as to what this error message even meant or what causes it, it would be helpful. Why Microsoft makes all their error messages as cryptic as possible instead of creating messages in layman's terms like "couldn't read filename.exe from C:" , "cannot find filename.dll on the install media", the way it used to be in Microsoft's early years when Bill Gates was still running things.

Answer 2

@ThomasStrike

Shawn, you didn't answer the last issue that Tom Booth had, the error that he received, "Untranslatable message, Win32LastError is 14001". I am getting this fatal message right after formatting of the hard drive has finished. I have Googled the Internet and so far have found no reference to this error message.

Does anyone have an idea as to what causes this in a fresh upgrade, install?

Thanks

Thomas, you need to ask your own question, providing details about your system and the problem you have rather than tacking on to a 6-year-old thread.

Please read

How to begin your own, new thread about your computer & your problem

How to ask a question

BTW, Google reports "about 106" results for the quoted error message.  Several people resolved the issue by cleaning the installation CD or by creating a new one.

Answer 3

Shawn, you didn't answer the last issue that Tom Booth had, the error that he received, "Untranslatable message, Win32LastError is 14001". I am getting this fatal message right after formatting of the hard drive has finished. I have Googled the Internet and so far have found no reference to this error message.

Does anyone have an idea as to what causes this in a fresh upgrade, install?

Thanks

Answer 4

Hi Tom Booth,

Thanks for posting. A Cyclic Redundancy Check error can possibly mean that there is a bad spot on your hard drive.

1. Place your Windows XP Installation CD and boot to it..
2. Press any key to start Windows Setup (Don't worry.. we're not actually using setup at this point)
3. Wait a while for setup to start, When you see Repair a Windows XP installation using the Recovery Console, then press the R key
4. Wait until you see this screen, and enter the number of your main installation. (Typically 1 for C:\Windows)
5. Press Enter.
6. If prompted to do so, enter your Administrator password. If you don't have one, leave it blank and press enter.
7. From the command prompt, enter: chkdsk /r (note the space between chkdsk and /r)

Allow it to complete undisturbed. 8. Remove the CD/DVD then reboot.

The other issue with the PC asking for the XP Professional Service Pack 2 disk is usually when you do a repair installation using incorrect media. Please see the below link on how to do a clean installation of Windows XP.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/316941

Hope this helps!

---

Shawn - Support Engineer - MCP, MCDST

Microsoft Answers Support Engineer

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