OK - this is what i did:
1) got the "Daemon Tools" (virtual drive utility) so that i could create the
file structure right on the hard drive, instead of having to use the DVD
2) install Daemon Tools,
reboot,
3) run Daemon Tools and 'mount' original downloaded VISTA image file (from MS)
4) copy all files to boot disk (C:\VISTA\ or whatever)
5: run "C:\VISTA\setup.exe" from hard disk (while running XPsp2)
V O I L A ! [by the way, ' voila ' is French, and not spelled wallah, or
whatever i've seen everyone using all over the net]
a few notes: don't try to upgrade!... do a clean install onto an unused
partition!
- i started with 5 partitions with 2 installs of XP2 C:\ and F:\ , so i
just installed VISTA to D:\ which only had user files. This worked perfectly.
- i had read a lot of these errors to do with SATA drives (which i have 2
of) and i thought it might have been drivers, but that didn't make any sense
because this is a recent vintage DELL.
I thought it might have been the burn, but everybody said they tried their
burns 2 or 3 or 4 times and still the same - "Setup failed to open the
Windows Image file" - so i figured it might be a DVD/CD player access issue.
I don't know why it took me so long to figure this out, because i always
copy OS files to hard disk before i install an OS - but not this time - i
followed the instructions ( ; ... and it didn't work!!!
Anyway, since the OS obviously recognized the boot drive after it copied a
few necessary files (20% or so) before rebooting to continue the install
(this is where the error came), i figured i'd just put the decompressed files
on the boot drive to help the situation out.
(btw - if you've made a DVD already, you could save some time by just
copying the DVD files to disk)
anyway good luck!
Borken said:
When I enter my Cd key and click next it comes up with a error saying that it
is missing the Windows Image File then goes back to the start of the setup.
This happens when I burnt it onto a dvd and booted off it. And if i try and
run it in Windows Xp it just says it is not a Valid win32 application. How
can i install it?