Re: reinstall failes

Thanks to NotMe, Patrick and CJ for your input. My comments may have been
misunderstood because, I just noticed, the original complaint by "les" refers
to the error following a "System Restore", and my grievance does not refer to
the System Restore utility. I'll backpedal in one other way, too: I do not
know that all XP OS CDs, or even all XP Professional OS CDs, sold by
Microsoft have the defect I've described. The error may not be so widespread.
(So I believe NotMe when he says he's never seen the error.)

Apart from those mini mea culpas, though, I stand by what I said. I am
certain that this "missing ASMS File" error did not occur because of a bad CD
or DVD ROM drive, I have two DVD ROM drives and one older CD ROM drive on my
PC. All three are reliable, and all three produce the error.

I also know that the error occurs on all four copies of the Windows XP Pro
setup disk that I own. I have an OEM hologram copy given to me by a former
boss, dated 2002, and three copies on MSDN Professional Subscription CDs
dated 2003. The error occurs on at least three of the MSDN copies as well as
the OEM.

Furthermore, I know that complaints about this error go back about five
years. Do a Google on "missing asms file" (but without the quotes). There
are numerous responses to the problem, coming from users and Microsoft MVPs
alike. The answers include dirty CD, bad drive, bad communication with
drive, etc. Recent online forums all refer to KB article Q311755, which
Microsoft published 5/4/2005, an article that, as I said before, is not
particularly helpful. In spite of all the comments and suggestions, though,
so far I have found no one besides myself who has actually searched the setup
CD to see if it even *has* a file called asms dot something. The absence of
this file is what tells me there is probably a defect in the repair logic, or
else on the CD itself. It is this fact that makes me skeptical of Patrick's
advice that "changing the hardware" might help. If a file called "asms"
something is being searched for, and doesn't exist, how could using a
different CD ROM help?

I don't know all the answers, and don't have time to find them either. But
I still think there is a defect in the repair logic of many if not all XP
CDs, or else a missing file on the CD. If anyone would like to try to
reproduce the problem (on a clean hard disk), and tell me what you find, I
would be grateful for your feedback. But please read sections 1 and 2 of my
earlier entry carefully, to be sure we're on the same page. This is not
about System Restore or the Recovery Console.

Oh yes. One piece of advice. I got into this mess by deleting 10 registry
keys; of course I exported them first. I thought I would be able to restore
(import) those keys if something went wrong. But that option was never
available to me because I could not boot to Safe Mode. When you can't boot
to Safe Mode in any form, next you try Recovery Console -- right? But you
cannot run reg.exe from Win\Sys32 to import those keys from Recovery Console.
Nor can you restore a System State backup, or much of anything else. It
would have been better to back up the whole registry from regedit using a
special recognizable suffix. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that would
have made it possible to recover using the Recovery Console.

"NotMe" wrote:

I must be weird, I have done many XP repair installs & have never had that
error.

--
A Professional Amateur...If anyone knew it all, none of would be here!
CarGodZeroOne@xxxxxxxxxxx
Change Alpha to Numeric to reply
"David B, SWE" <David B, SWE@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:A6B2EA9B-8EE2-4B0B-B267-7D9F083C05BA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"les" wrote:
doing a system restore it stopd and said file asms is needed from cd cd
is in
the drive can anyone help
Complaints in newsgroups, etc., about this "missing asms file" issue go
back
about five years. I personally have encountered the error at least three
times in as many years. Microsoft's Knowledge Base article Q311755 -- the
one that MVPs refer XP users to when they respond to this complaint -- is
irrelevant and useless. What we have here is a serious bug in the Windows
XP
setup CD that MVPs probably do not know about. Not only is it a serious
defect, one that affects virtually every copy of XP Professional Setup CD
and
DVD (I don't know about Home ed, never used it), but it is a defect that
has
never been acknowledged by Microsoft; there is no helpful KB article about
it, no workaround.
<snip>



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