Obscure WinXP Install Error

[Thrax]

Okay, friends, I have a real doozy of a stumper for all of you this morning. I'm working on a computer here (Inspiron 6000 (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1777825,00.asp)), and I was just going to reformat it to wipe XPMCE and place XP Home on it. The copy of XP Home is a retail upgrade edition, with a Windows 2000 disc available to it to do the upgrade.

After initiating the textmode portion of the setup where it loads some of the device drivers and prompts you to hit F6 to load SCSI/SATA drivers, the installer promptly bombs out and gives this error:

The file I386\Ntkrnlmp.exe could not be loaded. The error code is 7.

Here's what we have done:
-Six sticks of RAM in 24 different combinations.
-Brand new seagate laptop HDD.
-3 different Windows XP CDs (Pro, Home and 8-in-1)
-38 passes of memtest (Success)
-Six passes of Hitachi's DFT, 3 on each HDD (Success)
-Held F7 when the installer prompts for F6 to bypass ACPI detection
-Updated the laptop's BIOS to the newest version.
-Disabled PNP in the BIOS, as well as ACPI features.
-Disabled any and all emulation or legacy options in the BIOS.
-Every I/O and controller chip on the board passed diagnostics.
-Read the MSKB article regarding this issue.
-Read the first 13 pages of Google regarding this error.
-Used a new external CD/DVD-ROM to boot/attempt install.

What do you have for me, gents? :)

[QCH]

CD-ROM... If the CD-ROM is just a bit out of spec, it may fail to transfer files correctly. Considering it's a laptop, it may be tough to test and/ or work around.

Also, (duh) check the CD?

[Thrax]

Note above that we tested 3 separate CDs. I did, however, forget to note we tried a brand new external CD/DVD-ROM.

[primesuspect]

I'm with Q that it's a media issue.. What is the source of the three CDs? Are they legit retail pressed CDs or home-burned copies?

[Thrax]

The 8-in-1 was home-burned, the Pro was a factory-pressed full version, and Home was a factory-pressed upgrade version. Windows 2000 also threw this error at us later in the day, and it too is factory-pressed.

[profdlp]

Can you copy the WinXP CD to the HD and install it from there?

[Thrax]

Same error.

[profdlp]

Straw-grasping time.

Can you remove the HD, hook it to another computer, then copy the CD from there?

[Thrax]

That's what we did. The error is in the textmode portion of the installer. It doesn't care what the source is, we just get the same error.

[primesuspect]

laptop, can't swap out mobo/psu/cpu to test.

Bad hardware. It's either the mobo, processor, or PSU.

[Thrax]

My guess is that it is the mobo. I'm going to give up on it tomorrow and advise the customer to find something new.

[profdlp]

Really the last straw to grasp:

See if you can monkey with whatever BIOS settings there may be available to you (probably not many on a laptop...) and "dumb" the thing down as much as possible. Turn off all caching, lower memory timings, even drop the CPU speed if you can, etc.

[Thrax]

Did that first thing. It's in my initial post.