Reinstalling XP, scratched CD

Syribo

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Mar 9, 2008
Messages
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Okay so.. I've totally had this problem before (http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1418758) And I'm not sure how I ended up getting the installation to work in the end..

(Also, I have my XP serial number and everything.. it's on the sticker on the side of the case :) )

My old Dell Dimension 4550 has been slow lately (And I had my WoW account compromised last night) so it is definitely time to reformat and reinstall. However... my Dell XP OEM CD is... not in great condition. It gets to a certain point and then ends up not being able to find certain files (Exactly what happened last time).

I've tried over and over to burn an image of my installation CD and then burn a blank CD with that image on it, but it won't boot. When I put in the actual XP CD and boot up the system it asks "Press any key to boot from CD". When I put the CD with the XP CD image in and boot the system, it never asks for that. If I try to boot from it, it just doesn't work or do anything.

The most annoying thing is that I figured this all out last time and successfully reinstalled XP... but I can't now. I don't remember if I just kept trying the XP CD and eventually it installed completely without any errors. Sometimes it stops the setup at the beginning, sometimes at the end, sometimes in the middle. Right now I have a "File setupdd.sys could not be loaded. The error code is 7" message.

I guess I should finally just spend the $20 if Dell will still offer me a new Dell OEM XP installation disc... then I won't have this problem anymore...

Any ideas on what I could be doing wrong? :(
 
Where did you get the CD image?
You are using a cd burning app that can burn ISOs (assuming that's what your CD image is) natively right? You're not just putting the ISO image onto the disc and burning it right?
 
I'm actually just trying to burn an image of the XP CD I have that's kinda scratched up. (I wanted to try, in case I can get a good ISO of the CD burned.. and perhaps it's just the CD-ROM drive that can't deal with the old scratched up original XP disc, so a copy would hopefully work). I tried two different programs and got the same results (Used PowerISO [Which is what I usually use for burning/imaging/etc] and IMGBurn).

I'm hoping this is a good sign... I'm at the point in the setup where it is formatting the partition prior to installation. It hasn't gotten this far yet today... I hope it keeps going. Like I said, sometimes it stops at the beginning.. sometimes at the very end. But I figure it has a chance of working well enough to get a copy made, so I don't have this problem again :( But I just can't get a bootable image burned! :(
 
this may or may not help but, the guy at my local blockbuster told me they keep scratched discs working by giving a little spray of pledge and wiping it down. Apparently it fills in the little scratchs and often will prolong the life of the disc. I tried it on one of my kids dvd's and it worked like a charm.
 
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