I have a 1 year old Gateway system that from one day to the next just would would no longer boot. The Recovery console was useless as was backup boot disc.
I have tried following GW’s reinstallation procedure which boots from a drivers CD and erases the HD by doing a quick FDISK and FAT32 format. Then proceeds with installing the OS from a second CD.
Setup begins, copies the installation files to the HD and then gives the following error message: “The file “???” was not copied correctly. The file setup placed on your hard drive is not a valid XP system image. If you are installing from a CD, then there may be a problem with the Windows XP CD”
Note after attempting several times the file “???” was never the same, and skipping the file didn’t work either.
Tried a second approach – Used drivers disc to
boot into system and “Xcopied” the entire XP Program CD onto Hard Drive into a temporary folder. Ran “Winnt” in the i386 folder on the hard drive, setup ran, and same error message would come up.
Have also tried booting with a Win98 setup disk, Fdisked the HD, removed partition and recreated a new partition. Ran XP setup with a new CD and same error message comes up.
Also tried Gateways GWSCAN utility to check the HD. Utility said HD was fine, but test ran within a few minutes, seemed rather short.
Any suggestions would be great…..