I installed a new hard drive on my PC. I then tried to install Windows XP,
but I kept getting messages like, “Setup cannot copy the file ega40850.fon, or
eutrig,exe or a couple of others, and I believe it also said it couldn’t find
i386. I canceled the setup at that point. The new hard drive is a Seagate
SADTA. I do have another Windows XP CD that was for my prior computer, but the
system got fried and all I kept was my Windows CD. Could I possibly use that CD
to install Windows XP on my existing PC? Thanks.
In this excerpt from
Answercast #55, I look at the possibilities of using an XP installation CD
from a different computer to reinstall an operating system.
Become a Patron of Ask Leo! and go ad-free!
Install with a different CD?
It’s hard to say. You know, there’s certainly no harm in trying. I would
definitely give it a shot.
It sounds like the CD you started with has basically just got errors.
Perhaps it got scratched; perhaps it got degraded over time. It sounds like the
setup program that was running literally was unable to read the files that it
needed to install Windows XP. Hopefully, the other CD won’t have that
problem.
Manufacturer’s disc
Now there are two caveats that I want to throw out that may cause that
second CD to fail. One is that if it’s an OEM install of Windows (in other
words, a Windows CD that was supplied by a computer manufacturer), then it’s
possible that it may not apply to your current computer. The current computer
may be different enough (even if it’s from the same manufacturer) that the
drivers and so forth that are on that CD won’t apply and won’t work on your
new computer.
Or they may work poorly. Like I said, it’s worth a try but it could
fail.
Recovery disc
The other scenario that is a little bit more concerning (and will fail
immediately, of course) is to make sure that’s truly a Windows installation disc
and not a Windows recovery disc.
A Windows recovery disc (that comes with many computers from computer
manufacturers) actually doesn’t include a copy of Windows on it. It includes a
copy of some setup software that was provided by that manufacturer. That may do
things like assume there’s a recovery partition on the computer and then
restore Windows from that recovery partition.
Obviously, if you’re using a completely different computer (or if you’ve got
a completely blank hard drive)… well, there is not recovery partition – and even
if there is, it’s not going to be the recovery partition that this old copy of a
Windows recovery CD might expect.
So, ultimately there are a couple of things that can go wrong. There’s no
harm in trying.
Test the CD itself
The other thing that you might want to consider with your original disc, if
you have the opportunity, would be to see if you can read it properly on a
different machine.
Try copying the contents of that CD to a folder. If that works… in other
words, if on another computer you can actually copy the entire contents of that
CD to that computer’s hard disc, the CD’s fine.
It’s very possible then that your CD reader is either dirty or itself
having problems. That could potentially be resolved by replacing the reader.
So, that’s another option you might take a look into.
End of this Answercast Back to –
Answercast #55
Note that I have run into problems using one manufacturer’s OEM install disks on a different manufacturer’s computer. The main issue I find is that the Windows install key for manufacturer X won’t be recognized as a valid key for manufacturer Y’s OEM installs.
However, I note that the original post says the new hard drive is “Seagate SADTA”. I am going to assume he meant “SATA”. I have seen install disks which don’t include SATA support during the installation. (Yes, even the install disks that came with a computer which had SATA drives from the factory.)
If that’s the case, it may be possible that the BIOS has a setting to turn on “legacy” (or “IDE”, “EIDE”, or “PATA”) emulation for the SATA drives. Check the BIOS for such a setting and try turning it on. Then retry the install from the original XP disks. If that works, it may then be possible to switch the mode back to “true” SATA after the install is complete.
Windows XP did not have SATA support until SP1. I found that out when trying to do a repair install after replacing my IDE CD drive with a new SATA one. That’s the point where I upgraded to Vista (this was before Win 7). His best path is to install Win 7 on the new drive.
pretend it worked, just fine and Windows also did not install in trial mode as it is supposed to. Isn’t it totally illegal to do so, even through XP is not sold anymore.