Troubleshooting Installation Problems

The Windows XP installation process is designed to be as simple as possible. The chances for

installation errors are greatly minimized through the use of wizards and the step-by-step process.

However, it is possible that errors may occur.

In the following sections, you will more about:

_ Identifying and resolving common installation problems

_ Troubleshooting installation problems that relate to the Boot.ini file

_ Installing non-supported hard drives

_ Troubleshooting installation errors using installation log files

Troubleshooting Installation Errors with

the Boot.ini File

If the text-based portion of the installation completes successfully, but the GUI-based portion

of the installation fails, the error may be caused by a device driver that is failing to load properly.

If you suspect that this is causing the installation error, you can edit a file called Boot.ini to

list the drivers that are being loaded during the boot process. The Boot.ini file is located in the

root of the system partition.

In order to cause the device drivers to be listed during the boot process, you need to edit the

Boot.ini file to include the /sos switch, as shown:

[operating systems]

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS = "Microsoft

Windows XP Professional" /sos

Troubleshooting with Installation Log Files

When you install Windows XP Professional, several log files are created by the Setup program.

You can view these logs to check for any problems during the installation process. Two log files

are particularly useful for troubleshooting:

_ The action log includes all of the actions that were performed during the setup process and

a description of each action. These actions are listed in chronological order. The action

log is stored as \Windir\setupact.log.

_ The error log includes any errors that occurred during the installation. For each error, there

is a description and an indication of the severity of the error. This error log is stored as

\Windir\setuperr.log.

In Exercise 1.2, you will view the Windows XP setup logs to determine whether there were

any problems with your Windows XP installation.