Here's a weird problem that I ran into. I'm working on the computer for an exec in my company. The system had major filesystem corruption that I've cleaned up by pulling the drive and running chkdsk on it as a secondary drive in another system. I placed the drive back in the original system, but the OS refused to boot. There's the back story.
Here's the problem. I'm attempting to do an XP repair reinstall. The first phase goes fine. When it reboots into the gui phase, it attempts to read the files and then throws an Fatal error saying it can't find d:\i386\asms. I've tried original disks, burned disks from known good images, files directly off the hard drive, none of which make any difference. I've tried windows default hdd controller drivers, manufacturer drivers, third party mod drivers. I've combed over the forums, googled, dug through the microsoft kb and tried everything I could find. Nothing working so far.
The major weirdness, when I pull his drives and use a temporary drive, the OS installs cleanly without any problems. So I know it's not the media or the setup files.

So... to recap...
XP repair reinstall...
Fatal Error - cannot find d:\i386\asms @39 minute mark.
Not the media.
Not the CD-ROM filters in regedit.
Not the HDD controller drivers.

Can anyone save me from this massive headache? Help!?!

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] or-install

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/ser [...] bleshooter

Been there, tried that. No luck. Thanks for the suggestion badge.

Ok here is what you may have to do. Done this on a system that had problems with the HD partition the HD for 2 partitions.
I'd start with 10 mb on the safe side for partition 1 install xp on partition 2.or
Get ubcd and do a check again. Seeming that tis error happens during install or shortly after install xp takes about 500mb
Partition 1 can be used for storage just not system files.