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i have 2 lg drives an 8480b cd-rw and 8161b dvd i am using them on a leadtek nforce2 board and i am struggling to install winxp because the drives cant read files on the cd. its never the same file either. when i did get xp setup any archive files (ie xp service pack 1) i was told were corrupt but yet they read ok. i have used round ata133 cables and flat one incase this was the problem i have also swapped the cables round so i have the rw +dvd on the same cable and then the rw on its own with the dvd on the hdd cable. still no joy. has anyone had this problem also? thanks in advance ps hdd is ata133 maxtor 60gb

Is your copy of XP a CD-R?

yes but reads fine on other pc's nero detected no errors when i burnt another copy even burnt it via reading the disc first and then burning. i eventually got it on to the computer but was then getting archive corrupt messages from the xp sp1 file when read from the cd. if i swapped the disc over to the other drive it would then read it. i personally think its a dodgy hdd controller on the board. but was wondering if anyone else had had the problem. Both drives seem to behave in the same way too and i think its unlikely that i have two different drives from the same manufacturer with identical problems

5teve wrote:i personally think its a dodgy hdd controller on the board.

That seems like a reasonable possibility given all the information you have supplied. (Same problem on two different drives, same problem with different cables, no problem with disc itself in other computers, no errors measured on disc, etc.) I suppose there is a chance that Microsoft did something to make the XP disc difficult to copy correctly, but I haven't heard about any copy protection on it, and with their activation procedure I wouldn't think they would care about it being copied. Anyone else have success installing XP from a backup copy? I would suggest trying the install from the original XP disc just for completeness.

By the way, what is your EIDE controller?

cfitz

I have installed XP from a backup copy and everything went fine except for being able to boot from the CD

The ide controller is the new nforce2 one i think its the mcp2 or something like that. thats why i thought there could be an issue with compatibility but now i think just a dodgy board. thanks for the replys guys