Help a Newbie? Please. I'm pulling my hair out!

[Bama-Boy]

Well I have tried to install this OS for over a week with no luck. I get as far as 39 minutes remaining when I get errors out the azz. LOL. I have tried 4 different HD's 3 different CD's. I have partitioned them with fat32 and ntsf and formated them. I have a bootable cdrom but it will not startup the setup so I'm having to go into dos and run i386 then winnt. I think my problem is how I burnt my cd. The errors I'm getting are. "setup failed to install the product catalogs" and "system file time out of sync error code 800b0101" I was wondering if there was a complete guide of how to do a clean install from start to finish. Including the burn process since I think this is where i'm doing something wrong. Thanks for any reply.

[valkyre]

SP2 isn't out yet. How do you have it?

Other then that, I have no idea what's wrong.

[edg21]

If you think the problem is the cd, then maybe you just burn another one & try it

[Bama-Boy]

Well I don't know if I can say where I got it. I havn't read the forum rules yet.lol.

I have burned and burned I must be doing something wrong. Are there certain specifics to follow when burning this type of cd?

[edg21]

Are there certain specifics to follow when burning this type of cd?

Not in particular Just burn the ISO or BIN/CUE you have & that should be about it.

[Bama-Boy]

O I thought you had to convert the bin/cue to iso. Or is a bin/cue also a iso? I'm using nero 6 ultra do i go to cdrom bootable? Also, do I select the cue or the bin or both to burn? Thanks

[b0r3d]

If you just want to test your CD, i suggest you try a program like VirtualPC or VMWare. That way you can chop/change your CD without having to use a CD-R.

[Yazoo]

try this site on how to make your CD bootable

http://www.windows-help.net/windowsxp/winx...sp1-bootcd.html

[flyakite]

Well I don't know if I can say where I got it. I havn't read the forum rules yet.lol.

By saying this, I'm assuming it's not legal. If you downloaded it, have you ever considered that the file itself is possibly screwed up? If it's messed up, burning it with every burner program available on every cd burner on every OS doesn't mean it's going to work.

That's like burning an XP cd without ntoskrnl.exe on it or kernel.exe. It's just plain not going to work.

[williegeez]

You're probably using an expired authorization. Boot up in DOS and set your computer date back, say a year. Then reboot and let setup recontinue. If that's the problem, this will get you through installation. If you set your date to the correct date after you're done, you may get forced into reauthorizing your copy (which of course shouldn't be a problem); or maybe you can stay in 2002 for the rest of your life.

[Jono]

oh the joys of that, least you get a symetrical year there wont be another one of them until lemme see 20,20 woo hoo

[Entegrity]

Changing the date to the same date as the files on the CD fixed the installation error: system file time out of sync.

[Unwonted]

Try installing it to a 2 GB (or as low as 1.8 GB) partition first. It works, and I don't know why. You can resize it later with Partition Magic. I'll assume if you're using a CD that gets errors, you can also get Partition Magic pretty quickly

I played with this for literally eighteen months, even resorting to installing Windows 98 first (which also works, but is much slower).

[Vitaly]

Hello everybody,

I have about the same problem.

When trying to install Windows XP Pro with SP2 I get the following error message:

An error has been encountered that prevents Setup from continuing.

Setup failed to install the product catalogs. This is a fatal error. The setup log files should contain more info.

Log file reads:

Setup has encountered an error (system file time out of sync, error code is 800b0101).

Please verify that your computer is using the correct date and time and re-run Setup. This can be done by accessing the BIOS during system setup.

------------------

I bought computer about a week ago, installed XP and all was fine. Then I was looking for drivers to write CD's. Took the CD for my MB - installed some drivers. Rebooted and it never opened Windows again... Even in safe mode or in any other mode.

I think I installed VIA Tech RAID BIOS Ver.1.00 , because now I have 2 BIOS's or at least the second one is called User Window (called with TAB). Or maybe it had always been there. When I'm in VIA BIOS it doesn't respond, only exit works. It doesn't find any drives for channels unlike the first BIOS.

After reading the messages in this thread I think I'm going to try the following:

1. Look for deactivation of RAID in the main BIOS - this is advice from our sys admin.

2. Try to create a 2GB partition and install Windows on it - advice from this forum.

3. Try to boot from a diskette and set system time back in DOS

4. Try to restart BIOS manually (by triggering some button on the MB). Or load default BIOS settings (which didn't help yesterday at 2am).

5. Maybe I need another XP version.

Any useful comments on my situation would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Vitaly

[FthrJACK]

SP2 isnt out yet, so by using a beta you are running into problems... hello.. BETA?

you dont need to convert BIN/CUE to iso either to burn it, both are valid CD image formats, in nero v6 go to Recorder/Burn image and pick your cue file associated with the BIN file. In older versions of Nero you go to File/Burn image.. then drop the file type in the browser to "all files" and pick your BIN file to burn.

Or use Fireburner, its made just for burning Cue/Bin files.

The SP2 you are using is either the Beta thats doing the rounds, or it is just the latest hotfixes bundled into a file, which isnt really SP2 if its the later one.