XP SP3 stand-alone refuses to intall on new ThinkPad SL400

Sorry to post a problem report as my first post - kinda embarrassing......

I just got this ThinkPad SL400 2743PBC on promo. To manually clean Windows XP, I wiped out the entire HDD and installed XP Pro SP1 retail CD on it. Following Arki's guide, I tried to install SP3, before jumping on all the drivers. To my amazement whatever I did, the SP3 executable stand-alone file just refused to install. It did not even decompress OK - keeping tell me the file was corrupt. Then I redownloaded the SP3 file on my portable USB drive no go; burned the official SP3 ISO on CD again no go. "File corrupt" error while decompressing.

Am I doing something wrong? I'd think the laptop's WD HDD itself is good as I error-checked it using both HD Tune 3.5 WDC's diagnostic tool.

Thank you for advising!

 

That's strange. Perhaps you can provide a bit more detail. Are you booting from the Win XP disc (ie, restarting the computer and hitting esc (or whatever the key is on the Thinkpad) and manually selecting to boot from disc)? If so, what is the exact step that you are having issues with? How did you burn the disc and have you made sure to select a bootable disc?

 

Im almost positive this isnt a issue with your HD *whew*

dont worry I've seen this issue before: Make sure you do the following:

(a) Empty the PC's temporary internet files, and download a fresh copy.

Or:

(b) Disable anti-virus, and try again.

source: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949377

(follow the guide above if the two methods do not work)

 

Details of what I did when "File corrupt" error occurred:
On active Windows Pro SP1 (installed from retail CD), I downloaded and tried to install the below SP3 stand-alone executables both of which failed with "File corrupt" error while being decompressed.

Windows XP Service Pack 3 Network Installation Package for IT Professionals and Developers
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...A8-5E76-401F-BE08-1E1555D4F3D4&displaylang=en
Windows XP Service Pack 3 - ISO-9660 CD Image File
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...CE-B5FB-4488-8C50-FE22559D164E&displaylang=en
Burned on CD and tried to install, but no go either.

@Stewie Griffin: I'll try out tips on that MS KB page. As I said in my intial post, my ThinkPad SL400 has yet got nothing but XP Pro SP1 freshly installed from retail CD. The laptop was disconnected from the net during the whole process.

 

Please update your progress as you keep on working

 

Shouldn't you install SP2 before SP3?..

 

to my knowledge... no you do not need to

 

You got an XPsp1 retail disc, so you have a retail license, right?

If so, I say, forget about the XPsp1, install a XPsp3 instead.
You can download the installation disc iso by googling the file's SHA1 "1C735B38931BF57FB14EBD9A9BA253CEB443D459".

Just remember checking if the downloaded file's SHA1 matches the one above. Some times (not likely though) files get corrupted during the download process.

BTW, the standalone SP3 installation file's SHA1 is "8FA76CCEA145D050FC6A506FFBDEDFE53282E5B4".

And at last, here is a sweet little tool for SHA1 checking: http://beeblebrox.org/

 

His XP disc came with SP1...

 

Installation disc matters nothing. It's totally OK to install windows with any media including downloaded ISO, as long as you have the right license, which means the CD-KEY.

 

that said, you must get the installation disk that matches your license. volume licensing keys don't work in oem disks, and oem keys don't work in retail disks.

 

I'd advice you either download the file using a download manager such as Orbit or FlashGet, maybe the antivirus is somehow making the file corrupted.
If I were you I'd slipstream the service pack directly into the installation disc, this will require some tools but there are guides out there to accomplish this.

 

Thank you very much for the overwhelming help. Please give me some time and I will come back with a progress report.

 

Repeated what I did this morning (redownload SP3 etc.), The SP2 executable extracted OK and installed OK. As far as SP3 update is concerned, everything went OK. Guess I just had bad luck that day. Installing Lenovo drivers right now......

Again thank you all!

 

Glad to be of help. Enjoy your Thinkpad now.