This is normally the problem... Had that problem alot in my technician days.

 

That narrows down the choices...

XP is designed to be installed once and authenticated to that computer once. Microsoft has been increasing its efforts to strengthen its authentication program. They are very serious about it. They are much more serious about authentication that they are about fixing the bugs in Windows, unfortunately.

I did a quick Google search on the error you mentioned and most people reported the problem to be associated with dubious installation CD disks.

 

true but this cant be checked during install. If he had the problem 128days after the install then I would say its an authentication problem.

I would first say its a bad CD. it can look good but if something that early is burned out on it then it will cause the whole installation to crash.

Second possibility is bad hardware, definately not limited to harddrive

 

I have had laptops overheat during istall and cause the optical reader to flake out. Install is very resource intensive I was able to perfmon an isntall using VMWARE ESX virtual center and MS puts the tang to the ram and cpu.

I'd say if it feels hot put some spacers under each corner and run a fan over the laptop during the install to see if it helps. It cold simply be a case of thermal degeneration.

 

well i got a start on it today, i sucessfully installed 98SE... lol

maybe it will allow me to upgrade. that is the plan so far

 

ok so i thought 98 SE would work correctly. nope.


and XP wouldnt install over top of it. so i am back to square one.

 

Just dont fool with ME there are no upgrade paths from me. In order to upgrade from 98SE iirc you ned the xp upgrade cd not the full.

 

I understand what you're saying. I doubt any of us could write code to "phone home" during a windows install... and why would it just start doing it now... after all these installs...

 

i already tried that...

 

try an external cd drive , or copy cd onto hard drive and install from that directory.
if has a hard time copping from cd, that is most likly the problem.

 

thanks man i willl try that right now...

 

bring it to gainsville and i will have my friend look at it if its not done by then...... He builds computers

 

thanks bro. hopefully i will have it done today when i get off work. we will see....