My friend handed me his laptop today claiming it was dead and that it would not start and work. i turned it on and found that it was in the middle of a fresh windows installation of windows xp home sp 3. i called him and asked what he had done and he said he had tried to wipe the computer as he has done before only the power went out in the middle of the installation and now it wont finish. i have his copy of the install disc, and have tried to finish the install but it continues to look for a file by the name of "amsm". i have tried to boot straigh from cd using the boot menu but it only brings me back to the half finished install screen which is stuck at 39 minutes remaining. i have tried using a retail version of windows xp sp 3 from my work and still was unable to get it to boot from disc. if someone can help me to boot it from the disc i can install it just fine, just stuck at that point. thanks for all the help.
You posted the same in two section, in reality, you only need post the query once. I install my SP 3 from a download, about 300MB in size.
Like SP2 on a SP1 version of XP, you should be able to just remove a failed install packet like that in the Remove Program section, then start over, it's the best idea. If you can't get Windows to boot to a control panel, try the F8 during bootup for various SAFE mode boot options
yes i know it was a mistake.
there is no option to erase. and i have tried safe mood and other such as last good config, nothing it just fails to startup in safemood it says that it cant then it restarts and goes right back to install where you options are to either find the file that it wants, which it cant do from the install disc apparently or to cancel, which restarts the comp and brings it right back to it again
/
try disabling from hard drive in bios temporarily. And then boot from the install disc. Alternatively you could also get a boot CD like Hiren's BootCD and completely erase the hard drive of any existing windows installation. This way when you boot from windows installation cd, it will start a clean installation.
turns out it was actually the disc, the file on it was unable to be read and thus the computer could not find it, i extracted it and burnt it again as a new image on my mac and then inserted the next disc and finished the install, the promptly installed xp pro sp 3 :P
well good to know your problem got fixed
I have tried booting from the XP disc and using Recovery Console, then choosing MBR and the other Fix option, I can't recall off hand, if the XP on a HDD is not booting properly, those two options can help.
We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.