Reformating Hard Drive

[Charlie]

Heya,

XP went kaput, so I'm reformatting my hard drive. I
downloaded the boot disks, copied them onto the 6
floppies, loaded them on the machine, deleted 2 partitians
I didn't think where needed for full reformat, tried to
install Windows XP on the 76 gigs available, and I get the
error on the blue text screen;


The following value of the .SIF file used by Setup is
corrupt or missing.

Value 0 on the line in section [SourceDisksFiles]
with key "SPI.cab"

Setup cannot continue. To quit Setup, press F3.


Can anyone help? I just need to get the disk to load XP.
There exists 1 partitian of 73gigs still, and about 7 megs
of other data.

-Charlie

[Jupiter Jones]

Charlie;
If your computer is capable of booting to CDROM (All made in the last
several years are), there is no need for those disks.

Try it this way:
Disconnect all peripherals (camera, printer, scanner, etc)
Go to BIOS and set CDROM as boot device before hard drive.
Insert Windows XP CD and reboot.
At "Press any key to boot to CDROM" quickly press a key and follow the
prompts for a Clean installation:
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sg_clean.asp
Delete all partitions in step 5 if you desire to erase all data on the
hard drive.
Partitioning and formatting will be done automatically.
All data will be destroyed, back-up important data first.

--
Jupiter Jones
An easier way to read newsgroup messages:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/using/newsgroups/setup.asp
Please respond to newsgroup only for everyone's benefit.


"Charlie" > wrote in message
...
> Heya,
>
> XP went kaput, so I'm reformatting my hard drive. I
> downloaded the boot disks, copied them onto the 6
> floppies, loaded them on the machine, deleted 2 partitians
> I didn't think where needed for full reformat, tried to
> install Windows XP on the 76 gigs available, and I get the
> error on the blue text screen;
>
>
> The following value of the .SIF file used by Setup is
> corrupt or missing.
>
> Value 0 on the line in section [SourceDisksFiles]
> with key "SPI.cab"
>
> Setup cannot continue. To quit Setup, press F3.
>
>
> Can anyone help? I just need to get the disk to load XP.
> There exists 1 partitian of 73gigs still, and about 7 megs
> of other data.
>
> -Charlie

[Earl F. Parrish]

"Charlie" > wrote in message
...
> Heya,
>
> XP went kaput, so I'm reformatting my hard drive. I
> downloaded the boot disks, copied them onto the 6
> floppies, loaded them on the machine, deleted 2 partitians
> I didn't think where needed for full reformat, tried to
> install Windows XP on the 76 gigs available, and I get the
> error on the blue text screen;
>
>
> The following value of the .SIF file used by Setup is
> corrupt or missing.
>
> Value 0 on the line in section [SourceDisksFiles]
> with key "SPI.cab"
>
> Setup cannot continue. To quit Setup, press F3.
>
>
> Can anyone help? I just need to get the disk to load XP.
> There exists 1 partitian of 73gigs still, and about 7 megs
> of other data.
>
> -Charlie

You may have downloaded the setup disks for Windows XP SP1. You
have to have an SP1 version of Windows XP on the CD for this to
work. Go to the download site and see if the original Windows XP
boot disk package is still available.

Can you boot from the CD on your computer?

--
Earl F. Parrish

[Charlie]

>
>You may have downloaded the setup disks for Windows XP
SP1. You
>have to have an SP1 version of Windows XP on the CD for
this to
>work. Go to the download site and see if the original
Windows XP
>boot disk package is still available.
>
>Can you boot from the CD on your computer?
>
>--
>Earl F. Parrish
>
>.
>

Well, I get "NTLDR is missing" when I have nothing in the
machine, nor does it seem that i have the ability to
specify a specific drive to boot from. By default it
tries to boot from the floppy. I'll see about trying to
download those.

-Charlie

[Charlie]

Well, now I feel like a goof.

Holding down F2 at the machine's restart or boot up is
used to bring up BIOS, a hardwired program embeded into
the machine's motherboard. I wondered what that thing was
called. :p LOL I used it to select the CD as the number
1 item for booting up. Hopefully the CD for reformating
the system will do the trick, though I'm using one from a
Dell on a HP. I hope don't light the bugger on fire.

Thanks for the help!
Charlie

[Jupiter Jones]

Charlie;
Your Dell CD will not likely work on the HP.
In any case it is against the EULA you agreed to use the OS on a
different computer.

--
Jupiter Jones
Check the following link for some great problem solving newsgroups.
http://support.microsoft.com/newsgroups/default.aspx
Please respond to newsgroup only. Everyone can benefit from the
message.


"Charlie" > wrote in message
...
> Well, now I feel like a goof.
>
> Holding down F2 at the machine's restart or boot up is
> used to bring up BIOS, a hardwired program embeded into
> the machine's motherboard. I wondered what that thing was
> called. :p LOL I used it to select the CD as the number
> 1 item for booting up. Hopefully the CD for reformating
> the system will do the trick, though I'm using one from a
> Dell on a HP. I hope don't light the bugger on fire.
>
> Thanks for the help!
> Charlie
>