Re: Repair install hangs!

[Guest David B, SWE]

"Carey Frisch [MVP]" wrote:

> "The file 'Asms' on Windows XP Professional CD-ROM is needed"

> error message when you install Windows XP

> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/311755/en-us

>

> --

> Carey Frisch

> Microsoft MVP

> Windows - Shell/User

> Microsoft Community Newsgroups

> http://news://msnews.microsoft.com/

>

> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------­----------------

>

> "KT" wrote:

>

> | I'm doing a repair install of XP SP2, and after the first reboot .. which is

> | back to SP1 ... it says "cannot find file 'asms' on E: drive". I looked on

> | the XP cd and "asms" is a sub-folder of \i386, but there is no file named

> | "asms" anything. I typed in E:\i386\asms in the search bar, but it still

> | says "cannot find". There is no "browse" or "skip" option on this message

> | window either, only "OK" or "cancel". When you hit cancel, it says "windows

> | repair install is not complete and cannot continue". Now what?

> | TIA

>

> Complaints in newsgroups, etc., about this "missing asms file" issue go back about five years. I personally have encountered the error at least three times in as many years. Microsoft's Knowledge Base article Q311755 -- the one that MVPs refer XP users to when they respond to this complaint -- is irrelevant and useless. What we have here is a serious bug in the Windows XP setup CD that MVPs probably do not know about. Not only is it a serious defect, one that affects virtually every copy of XP Professional Setup CD and DVD (I don't know about Home ed, never used it), but it is a defect that has never been acknowledged by Microsoft there is no helpful KB article about it, no workaround.

 

It's as hard to be precise about this as it is to be brief, because now that

I've spent three days restoring my OS and apps, I don't want to step through

the XP CD setup steps again. But I can summarize briefly for all MVPs who

may be listening: 1) what leads up to this Windows XP setup disk error 2)

how to reproduce the "missing asms file" bug on the XP setup CD 3) why the

KB article Q31175 is unhelpful.

 

1. A user elects this "repair" option in the XP Setup only after all other

efforts to recover have failed. I got to this do-or-die place last week by

exporting and then deleting 10 registry keys that all pertained (I thought)

to an app that didn't properly uninstall itself.

 

You've tried "Last Known Good Configuration", Safe Boot and its variants,

and you know you can't boot to Safe mode you've tried "Don't reboot after

startup failure" (or whatever the wording is, toward the bottom of the list)

-- you'll get a Hex 7B error code in this case, which no one in all of New

Delhi understands. Without Safe Mode, you cannot import saved "reg" files,

run the Reg.exe tool, restore a System State backup made with NT Backup, or

use System Restore. You've tried the Recovery Console, and copied the

original five registry files from Repair subfolder of Sys32, and that doesn't

work either.

 

2. According to the authoritative "Windows XP: Inside Out" (Microsoft,

2001, p.815ff), "you may be able to repair your Windows XP installation using

the Windows Setup program. . . . The repair option is quick and painless..."

The same advice appears in other XP books. This is *not* the repair option

that appears right after "Welcome to Setup" screen. At that screen, press

Enter, not R. Then press F8 to accept the EULA, and from the screen showing

your Windows installations (usually one), choose the correct installation,

and *then* press R. The setup program reloads XP OS files, then reboots your

PC. Soon after this reboot, you'll get a message saying the system cannot

find a file called "ASMS", and it gives you an input box to enter the correct

path of that file. However, though an ASMS *folder* exists, there is no ASMS

file on *any* Windows XP setup disk, no way to work around the error, and no

way (for any XP Professional user anywhere in the world) to continue past

this point. The "repair" option has to fail for everyone who tries it.

 

 

At this point, you write to a newsgroup or search Microsoft or Google for a

KB article that could help. Or, like me, you call Microsoft Tech Support

(incident 1038826788) about the problem -- they'll guide you through all the

above steps, and then give up when you get to the ASMS error, advise you to

reinstall XP, and refund your $80.

 

3. The only Microsoft Knowledge Base article that pertains to this issue,

Q311755, under the section on the NTFS file system, offers three "methods" to

fix the problem. The first, running RegEdit, can only work if you can get to

the command prompt -- but if you could run Windows in Safe Mode, you would

not be using this last resort from the setup disk in the first place. The

second method advises installing Windows in another partition no thanks,

that is no easier than reinstalling the whole OS on the main partition. The

third method says to "use the original XP CDROM" (the one with the hologram),

not a copy. If the original can't be found, "look for the Asms folder. If

the folder is missing or the files that it contains are zero bytes, the

CD-ROM was not burned correctly. "

 

But as stated above, while an ASMS folder exists, there is no ASMS file,

even on the hologram copy of the XP Pro setup CD. That's why this third

solution always fails.

 

It is time Microsoft publicly acknowledged this defect in its omnipresent XP

Setup disk CD and offer some kind of workaround. I also would appreciate it

if Microsoft tech support representatives would stop pretending they don't

know about this issue. I am convinced they do know about it, because in all

three cases where I have called upon their help over the past three years,

they have known when to give up and offer a refund: "ASMS File Not Found" is

endgame they all know it, and unlike the KB article, they don't bother

asking you if you are using an original hologram XP setup disk or advising

you to try a different CD ROM drive, because they know that neither of these

steps makes any difference.

 

I don't plan to buy Vista until all the serious bugs in XP have been worked

out. I can handle minor bugs -- no OS is perfect -- but this is not minor!

I suggest other XP Professional users do likewise.