[montyq]

hi. I'm hoping someone can help me. I've never installed an o/s before. As far as I know, no o/s was installed on this system previously. I've got an Asus P5GD1-VM motherboard with a P4 2.8 ghz cpu. I've got 2 harddrives in there, both currently setup as Masters. Not sure if that's making things more complicated... Anyhoo, I've got actual XP MCE 2005 install disks, holograms and everything. I powered the PC on and it asked me to insert a boot disk (BIOS is set to boot from the disk first). I put in the install disk 1 and it seemed to work ok. It asked me which drive to partition, and it went thru the install process, it then ran setup and installed some files, then rebooted. Upon reboot, it started to run from the boot disk again and gives me an error msg, "The file 'Asms' on Windows XP Professional CD-ROM is needed. Type the path where the file is located, and then click OK."

Once I click ok, it reboots the pc and the whole thing starts again until that same error msg returns. I've tried changing the bios to boot from the HD but that doesn't seem to help. Microsoft has a whole page on this problem here: http://support.micro...b;EN-US;Q311755 but their remedies involve hitting "shift-F10" and from a dos prompt, editing the registry. When I get the error and press shift-f10, nothing happens. I can't get to any dos prompt.

microsoft is helpful and has an answer for that as well. They say that if I have another partition, I should install XP onto that partition and once that's successfull, edit the registry later. BUT, I tried that, and I get the same error message! So now I have 2 HD's with XP partially installed on both, and I can't seem to get past this "asms file needed" thing.

Does this have anything to do with my harddrives both being masters? I think next I'm going to unplug one of the drives to see if I can get it to work then. The only other thing I can get off microsoft's website it to use their Recovery console. Is there anything else I can try before that?

Any help anyone can provide would be appreciated. Thanks!

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Oh, and microsoft is quite helpful when they say this: "If you are not using a retail Windows XP CD-ROM with a hologram (for example, if you are using a burned CD-ROM), try to run the Setup program from a retail CD-ROM with a hologram. To verify this, start the computer by using Recovery Console, and then check the C:\$win_nt$.~ls folder. Look for the Asms folder. If the folder is missing or the files that it contains are zero bytes, the CD-ROM was not burned correctly."

So, if my xp mce 2005 install disk wasn't burned correctly, does anyone know how I go about getting a new one? These disks came with the PC. I didn't buy them in any particular store. How can I go about getting them exchanged? Hmm...

[montyq]

Oh, and microsoft is quite helpful when they say this: "If you are not using a retail Windows XP CD-ROM with a hologram (for example, if you are using a burned CD-ROM), try to run the Setup program from a retail CD-ROM with a hologram. To verify this, start the computer by using Recovery Console, and then check the C:\$win_nt$.~ls folder. Look for the Asms folder. If the folder is missing or the files that it contains are zero bytes, the CD-ROM was not burned correctly."

So, if my xp mce 2005 install disk wasn't burned correctly, does anyone know how I go about getting a new one? These disks came with the PC. I didn't buy them in any particular store. How can I go about getting them exchanged? Hmm...

[cheathawk1]

OK, first off, the fact that they are both set to master is a BIG problem. One should be set to Master, and the other to slave. And you should install Windows on the Master drive. I would reccomend starting from scratch after correcting the double master problem. Reformat the drives and place the installation CD into the drive then restart the computer and begin installing Windows again, making sure to choose the drive you selected as Master when it asks what drive you want to install it on.

Oh, and about the cds not being burned corectly, if they came with the computer, you could contact the manufacturer, or the place you bought the computer from. But first, try the steps i said above, that should work.

--Chris