Re: reinstall failes

One more thing. The URL you gave me, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/326246
, didn't work. I did find it though by adding en-us to the end:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/326246/en-us.

"C J." wrote:

My full retail CD Says "Service Pack 2 Included, Version 2002" on the
holographic label.

You're having some doubts about the condition of the disk media too?

One other thing I was meaning to ask you ... have you made any significant
hardware changes to your system. I'm assuming the OEM disk shipped with
your PC initially. Does the COA sticker for that disk say "OEM -software"
or "OEM-SLP" on the label. This would be an important detail to make note
of. If its an OEM-SLP CD then the original hardware that shipped with your
system would still have to be in the PC.. as the disk is BIOS locked for a
specific configuration of hardware.

I've been re-thinking this problem over and over since you started this
thread. While it doesn't make sense to me that 3 MSDN disks would all
display the same ASMS error - as the OEM disk, it would if you couldn't use
them to do a "repair installation" on an existing OEM build.
A Full Retail disk would be a different matter.

Its either a significant hardware change you've made, your CD Drives, or
something about the Setup Media. I don't know why, but I keep coming back
to the CD/DVD drives myself.

I did a search last night online... and I hate to admit it but most of the
articles I found, all pointed to the knowledge base article you cited
earlier one as being a pointless remedy. Aside from a few assine
suggestions to copy ASMS to the harddrive before doing the repair.

Damaged or defective media is a different matter. Microsoft does have a
policy in place for replacing damaged or defective software and products.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/326246 <<

If the disks are defective - see if you can obtain replacements.
Particularly for the OEM disk from the builder of your PC. Microsoft is
pretty Anal about OEM disks, but if the manufacturer is no longer in
business they will work with you on it. One post I came across lastnight
about ASMS was resolved with the poster obtaining a new OEM Install CD from
where they purchased their PC.

Final option www.Restoredisks.com If your Make, Model, and series of PC
is listed there, then there is a chance you could pick up a disk from them
pretty cheaply.






David B, SWE <DavidBSWE@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
One last question, for les, Patrick, CJ, and "Not Me". My Windows XP
setup CD, the one with the hologram, says 2002 on the front. Would you
mind telling what year you see on yours ?

Thanks for responding, and thanks for your feedback and advice. :)

"David B, SWE" wrote:



"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.

It's as hard to be precise about this as it is to be brief, because now
that I've spent three days restoring my OS and apps, I don't want to
step through the XP CD setup steps again. But I can summarize briefly
for all MVPs who may be listening: 1) what leads up to this Windows XP
setup disk error; 2) how to reproduce the "missing asms file" bug on the
XP setup CD; 3) why the KB article Q31175 is unhelpful.

1. A user elects this "repair" option in the XP Setup only after all
other efforts to recover have failed. I got to this do-or-die place
last week by exporting and then deleting 10 registry keys that all
pertained (I thought) to an app that didn't properly uninstall itself.

You've tried "Last Known Good Configuration", Safe Boot and its variants,
and you know you can't boot to Safe mode; you've tried "Don't reboot
after startup failure" (or whatever the wording is, toward the bottom of
the list) -- you'll get a Hex 7B error code in this case, which no one
in all of New Delhi understands. Without Safe Mode, you cannot import
saved "reg" files, run the Reg.exe tool, restore a System State backup
made with NT Backup, or use System Restore. You've tried the Recovery
Console, and copied the original five registry files from Repair
subfolder of Sys32, and that doesn't work either.

2. According to the authoritative "Windows XP: Inside Out" (Microsoft,
2001, p.815ff), "you may be able to repair your Windows XP installation
using the Windows Setup program. . . . The repair option is quick and
painless..." The same advice appears in other XP books. This is *not*
the repair option that appears right after "Welcome to Setup" screen.
At that screen, press Enter, not R. Then press F8 to accept the EULA,
and from the screen showing your Windows installations (usually one),
choose the correct installation, and *then* press R. The setup program
reloads XP OS files, then reboots your PC. Soon after this reboot,
you'll get a message saying the system cannot find a file called "ASMS",
and it gives you an input box to enter the correct path of that file.
However, though an ASMS *folder* exists, there is no ASMS file on *any*
Windows XP setup disk, no way to work around the error, and no way (for
any XP Professional user anywhere in the world) to continue past this
point. The "repair" option has to fail for everyone who tries it.


At this point, you write to a newsgroup or search Microsoft or Google
for a KB article that could help. Or, like me, you call Microsoft Tech
Support (incident 1038826788) about the problem -- they'll guide you
through all the above steps, and then give up when you get to the ASMS
error, advise you to reinstall XP, and refund your $80.

3. The only Microsoft Knowledge Base article that pertains to this
issue, Q311755, under the section on the NTFS file system, offers three
"methods" to fix the problem. The first, running RegEdit, can only work
if you can get to the command prompt -- but if you could run Windows in
Safe Mode, you would not be using this last resort from the setup disk
in the first place. The second method advises installing Windows in
another partition; no thanks, that is no easier than reinstalling the
whole OS on the main partition. The third method says to "use the
original XP CDROM" (the one with the hologram), not a copy. If the
original can't be found, "look for the Asms folder. If the folder is
missing or the files that it contains are zero bytes, the CD-ROM was not
burned correctly. "

But as stated above, while an ASMS folder exists, there is no ASMS file,
even on the hologram copy of the XP Pro setup CD. That's why this third
solution always fails.

It is time Microsoft publicly acknowledged this defect in its
omnipresent XP Setup disk CD and offer some kind of workaround. I also
would appreciate it if Microsoft tech support representatives would stop
pretending they don't know about this issue. I am convinced they do
know about it, because in all three cases where I have called upon their
help over the past three years, they have known when to give up and
offer a refund: "ASMS File Not Found" is endgame; they all know it, and
unlike the KB article, they don't bother asking you if you are using an
original hologram XP setup disk or advising you to try a different CD
ROM drive, because they know that neither of these steps makes any
difference.

I don't plan to buy Vista until all the serious bugs in XP have been
worked out. I can handle minor bugs -- no OS is perfect -- but this is
not minor! I suggest other XP Professional users do likewise.



.

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