have solved this problem, there was something wrong with one of the lines in the winnt.sif, found that i was using the deploy tools of sp2 while am trying 2 install sp1, this caused me this problem i think the line that caused the error is this : msmsgs=off since i didnt find any thing about it in the deplying tool help file am still having couple of errors, i will try hunting them down thx guys for trying to help me