Troubleshooting Installations

• You can zero in on the cause of a problem if you know at which stage an error occurred.

• Common problems encountered during installation of Windows XP Professional and their solutions are listed in Table 2.

Table 2. Windows XP Professional Setup Process

Phase	Prompted Actions	Possible Problems
Boot into DOS mode	Load storage device drivers	Hardware incompatibility with the storage device; incompatible device driver; wrong device driver; no built-in device drivers; Windows XP Setup does not detect the storage device, such as a SCSI hard disk.
Welcome to Setup	Select Recovery Console option, installation, or quit	Accidental selection of Recovery Console (R) or quitting Setup (F3).
EULA agreement	Accept the EULA	Not accepting the EULA.
Create partitions	Select or create a partition	Not creating or selecting a partition.
File system	Select a file system to format the drive	Disk errors prevent formatting the drive; formatting a partition that contains information; using NTFS for a dual-boot computer that requires FAT.
File copy	Computer reboots after files are copied	Disk errors prevent files from copying; not enough space on the designated drive for files to be copied; source drive for file copy (network) does not contain all the necessary files/drivers for following installation phases.
Graphical mode	Setup detects and installs drivers	Source drive for file copy (network) does not contain the correct drivers.
Regional and language settings	Select the language to use	User installed from an incorrect language version of Windows XP Professional.
Name and organization	Enter a user's name and company name	Information is later used by some applications, but this screen is not related to installation problems.
Product key	Input the product key	Invalid, missing, or duplicate product key.
Computer name	Enter a computer name	A duplicate computer name causes network conflicts. NetBIOS requires each computer name to have less than 15 characters, which cannot use special characters such as ; : " < > * + = \ | ? ,
Dialup info	Enter modem and time zone information	Incorrect time zone information may cause application errors later, but this screen is not usually related to installation problems.
Network settings	Accept typical settings or choose custom settings	Computer cannot connect to the domain; computer has a network address conflict; computer cannot connect to some/all network devices; computer cannot share files or printers; network adapter drivers are incorrect; computer cannot obtain an IP address.
File copy	Setup completes file copying and cleans up temporary files	Hardware device drivers are loaded after Windows XP restarts; an error after this point may be a hardware device driver error.

• The most common errors are caused by lack of compatibility with the hardware, the BIOS, or drivers. In addition, lack of disk space, network errors, and name or IP address conflicts can cause a failure during setup.

• When the installation CD cannot be read, try it in a different drive.

• Use IP utilities, described in Table 3, to troubleshoot network connectivity on a TCP/IP network.

Table 3. IP Utilities

Utility	Command	Usage
Packet InterNet Groper (Ping)	ping	Uses an echo command to establish whether packets can be routed at the Network layer on a network.
File Transfer Protocol (FTP)	ftp	Uploads/downloads files on a network. This command helps you determine whether Application layer functions can work on the network.
Telnet	telnet	Establishes a character-based session with a Telnet server across a network. This command helps you determine whether Session layer functions can work on a network.
Line printer daemon	lpr	Executes a print job on a network printer.
Ipconfig	ipconfig	Shows the IP configuration of network adapters installed in a computer. From the results of this command, you can determine whether you have incorrectly addressed the adapter or the default gateway, or whether the adapter was unable to obtain an address from the DHCP server. Use the /all switch to show all IP configuration information. Other switches, such as /release or /renew, can assist with correcting DHCP problems.
Name Server Lookup	nslookup	Checks DNS entries.
Netstat	netstat	Displays Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) connections and protocol statistics. To find all the applicable switches, type netstat /? at the command prompt.
Nbtstat	nbtstat	Is similar to netstat, except that it resolves NetBIOS names to IP addresses. To find all applicable command switches, type nbtstat /? at a command prompt.
Trace Route	TRacert	Shows all the routing hops that a packet takes to reach a destination on a network.

• When an indeterminate hardware-related error occurs during setup, remove all nonessential adapters and peripherals. Install Windows XP Professional, and then add each adapter and peripheral back onto the computer one at a time, verifying that the computer functions until all are installed or the problem-causing device is discovered.

• A common error during RIS installation is that a user attempts to install the operating system by using a floppy that wasn't created with Rbfg.exe.

• Understand the logs that are created during setup and what types of information or errors they will contain:

  • Setupact.log Chronological set of actions performed by Setup

  • Setuperr.log All errors occurring during setup

  • Comsetup.log COM+ component installation information

  • Setupapi.log All .inf device driver installation

  • Netsetup.log Results of Windows XP joining a domain

  • Setup.log Information used by Recovery Console

• The System log displayed in Event Viewer displays errors that may have caused a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD).