Yet more followup in the vain hope this diatribe helps another hapless fool who bought a Dell or Windows XP Home:
The installation can continue if one does NOT select the recommended paths to the 'missing' files in the dialog boxes. Rather, if the script the mor_ons at Dell or Redmond created suggests that some missing 'file' is needed from the very CD you have in your drive, don't pay attention to the default path:
globalroot\device\cdrom0\i386
rather, try using c:/i386 as the path.
Going through this exercise about 5 dozen times and you might eventually get some progress in the installation.
What an utter waste of electrons. No more Windows for me -- this Dell's gonna go Linux.
Denny, thanks for the thought, but I couldn't even get the machine to boot to go that far. The machine woulud splash the Windoze four-pane window, but crash well before any desktop would appear. The machine would not even boot in safe mode (any of the three safe modes offered).
However, a reinstall (hardly elegant) may have got us further along. The 2350 has just finished the installation and is preparing to reboot.
...intermission...
Well, it isn't much better off. Win XP splash screen, arrow on black, lots of hard drive activity, now windows is starting up: To begin, click a user name (my account) -- uh oh, having trouble getting personal settings. Long pause.
10 minutes later.. still waiting as my personal settings are retrieved.
Screw this -- where's the power plug and how come cntl-alt-del can't kill this miserable machine?
Plug it back in. Press the power button. Same sequence. Oh wait, it let me log in. Time to apply some Windows Update Patches. Oh no! Software Updater wants me to update it so it can use the 'new website' -- only, selecting the New Updater button is an infinite loop -- click, pause, nothing happens, button reappears.
Check the network, you say? Nope... it's fine. I can surf. Maybe a restart will help.
OK -- I'm pretty convinced Dell is a lot less culpable than MS on this nightmare, but I sorely wish Michael Dell had the gonads to go with Linux than whatever hairballs are coughed up from Redmond. The hardware, toaster that it is, seems to be doing just fine.
Finally, the machine is booting. I'll retrieve all of my data and wipe this beast clean later tomorrow, just after I set up the G5 Dual Processor the boss just carried in. Hot dang, a good computer for once.
More on this nightmare: So we've run chkdsk, and it found nothing. So we've decided to punt and restore the xp home edition from the original CDs that came with the Dell -- oh joy. Looks like it might work.
Wait, nope. We were wrong. We elect to run the restore XP option, having booted from the cute little fuschia disk clearly labeled as Operating System, Reinstallation CD Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition Including Service Pack 1.
This pleasant little waste of polycarbonate offered the option to reinstall (restore) the WinXP components -- only when one runs it, it gets as far as "Installing Windows" and askes for the file 'asms' on the very CD that it is installing from... oh hey, guess what? It wants the Path to the file. Doesn't the installer script know where the freakin' files are, or was it written by one of those dorks in the Dell Intern commercials? BTW, Dell, the errant script is asking for a file, but the only thing remotely similar in name is a DIRECTORY, not a FILE. Sadly, that does us absolutely no good... it isn't acceptable by the installer.
I am definitely buying a Mac for my next real computer -- all the marketing and bombast from MS and Dell can't make up for the lousy real products sold.
What the heck do I do with this dumb piece of junk now?
You should have at least two copies of that file on your system, one in C:\Windows\system32 and one in C:\Windows\system32\dllcache (and probably one in C:\Windows\Service Pack Files\i386). Right-click them and select Properties. They should both be version 5.1.2600.1106 with a creation date of 8/17/03. If they are not, run System File Checker to replace the corrupted/missing file. Do this by going to Start|Run, typing
sfc /scannow and clicking OK. That should replace the corrupted file and resolve your problem. If it does not, post back for another possible procedure.
afterhours
4 Posts
0
May 18th, 2004 19:00
The installation can continue if one does NOT select the recommended paths to the 'missing' files in the dialog boxes. Rather, if the script the mor_ons at Dell or Redmond created suggests that some missing 'file' is needed from the very CD you have in your drive, don't pay attention to the default path:
globalroot\device\cdrom0\i386
rather, try using c:/i386 as the path.
Going through this exercise about 5 dozen times and you might eventually get some progress in the installation.
What an utter waste of electrons. No more Windows for me -- this Dell's gonna go Linux.
afterhours
4 Posts
0
May 18th, 2004 19:00
However, a reinstall (hardly elegant) may have got us further along. The 2350 has just finished the installation and is preparing to reboot.
...intermission...
Well, it isn't much better off. Win XP splash screen, arrow on black, lots of hard drive activity, now windows is starting up: To begin, click a user name (my account) -- uh oh, having trouble getting personal settings. Long pause.
10 minutes later.. still waiting as my personal settings are retrieved.
Screw this -- where's the power plug and how come cntl-alt-del can't kill this miserable machine?
Plug it back in. Press the power button. Same sequence. Oh wait, it let me log in. Time to apply some Windows Update Patches. Oh no! Software Updater wants me to update it so it can use the 'new website' -- only, selecting the New Updater button is an infinite loop -- click, pause, nothing happens, button reappears.
Check the network, you say? Nope... it's fine. I can surf. Maybe a restart will help.
OK -- I'm pretty convinced Dell is a lot less culpable than MS on this nightmare, but I sorely wish Michael Dell had the gonads to go with Linux than whatever hairballs are coughed up from Redmond. The hardware, toaster that it is, seems to be doing just fine.
Finally, the machine is booting. I'll retrieve all of my data and wipe this beast clean later tomorrow, just after I set up the G5 Dual Processor the boss just carried in. Hot dang, a good computer for once.
afterhours
4 Posts
0
May 18th, 2004 19:00
Wait, nope. We were wrong. We elect to run the restore XP option, having booted from the cute little fuschia disk clearly labeled as Operating System, Reinstallation CD Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition Including Service Pack 1.
This pleasant little waste of polycarbonate offered the option to reinstall (restore) the WinXP components -- only when one runs it, it gets as far as "Installing Windows" and askes for the file 'asms' on the very CD that it is installing from... oh hey, guess what? It wants the Path to the file. Doesn't the installer script know where the freakin' files are, or was it written by one of those dorks in the Dell Intern commercials? BTW, Dell, the errant script is asking for a file, but the only thing remotely similar in name is a DIRECTORY, not a FILE. Sadly, that does us absolutely no good... it isn't acceptable by the installer.
I am definitely buying a Mac for my next real computer -- all the marketing and bombast from MS and Dell can't make up for the lousy real products sold.
What the heck do I do with this dumb piece of junk now?
Denny Denham
2 Intern
•
18.8K Posts
0
May 18th, 2004 19:00
You should have at least two copies of that file on your system, one in C:\Windows\system32 and one in C:\Windows\system32\dllcache (and probably one in C:\Windows\Service Pack Files\i386). Right-click them and select Properties. They should both be version 5.1.2600.1106 with a creation date of 8/17/03. If they are not, run System File Checker to replace the corrupted/missing file. Do this by going to Start|Run, typing sfc /scannow and clicking OK. That should replace the corrupted file and resolve your problem. If it does not, post back for another possible procedure.