Installing XP-pro

Trying to install XP (pro) on a new harddrive, on an old system.
But when the XP files are being a few files can't seem to copy.
I'm then forced to press ESC and continue with the install, since retrying doesn't do it.
Some of the files are, article.chm p3.sys, parport.sys, xptht07D.jpg, and a few others.
Anyone know what's going on here?
It's a friends computer and I've never really had problems installing Windows before. This is a pain in the.... Big time.
It's a 5-8 year old Hell Optiplex PIII, 128mb ram.
Anyone have any thoughts...? thanks.

 

>> Trying to install XP (pro) on a new harddrive, on an old system. But when the XP files are being a few files can't seem to copy. I'm then forced to press ESC and continue with the install, since retrying doesn't do it. Some of the files are, article.chm p3.sys, parport.sys, xptht07D.jpg, and a few others. Anyone know what's going on here? Anyone have any thoughts? <<

It is likely either a corrupt XP Professional disk or their is something wrong w/the CD Rom Drive as in the CD Rom drive may not be "reading the disk" correctly due to contamination on either the install disk or the lasers on the drive. You might be able to "fix" this problem by thoroughly cleaning the Win XP installation disk itself as well as cleaning the CD Rom drive heads.

P.S. Good luck with running Win Pro on a 500MHz Intel Pentium III with 128 RAM.

 

Yeah- the specs are a bit low for XP. Especially the memory. My friend's Mom has XPPro on a laptop PIII and it dragged badly with 128mb. We added a 2nd RAM chip for 256mb total and it's whole different experience. Anyway- to your problem. As ..ABLE stated above, the XP CD may be scratched. The CD Drive is not likely bad as they seldom die. Chances are you have some flakey memory chips. Whenever I've encountered the same problem you describe, swapping out the memory has worked EVERY time (unless, of course, the CD is terribly scratched). So, throw some different memory in the PC and you should be able to load your OS w/o a hitch...

hopperdave2000

 

I second Hopperdave's suggestion, when my RAM was going bad that's exactly what happened. Throw Memtest86 at it to check the RAM out.

 

Already running memtest as a friend told me.
Compuable, XP was already on there, lol.
We'll see how it goes.
Regardless if it passes memtest, I'll try to toss in (rather find some) RAM for this old hunk'a'junk.
Thanks again, I'll keep you posted.