MCSA/MCSE Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-270): Installing ...

21-42 Chapter 21 Installing Windows XP Professional (1.0)
Objective 1.5
Troubleshoot Failed Installations
Setting up an operating system is an extremely complex procedure. The rich variety of
hardware components provides an unlimited number of combinations that the setup
routine must be able to accommodate. To make these procedures even more complex,
Windows XP Professional is often installed on hardware that was designed after the
release of the operating system.
These complexities lead to occasional failures of the setup routine. Although these failures
are challenging to resolve, Windows XP Professional makes this a much simpler
process by providing detailed logging and debugging information. Understanding how
to interpret these log files is critical to quickly resolving failed installations. If you find
that these log files are not providing enough information to effectively troubleshoot a
failed installation, detailed debugging can be enabled.
The setup routine has three installation phases: the Setup Loader phase, the Text-
Mode Setup phase, and the GUI-Mode Setup phase. Understanding which installation
steps occur during each of these three stages is critical to troubleshooting a failed
install.
Throughout these setup phases, text-based log files are written to the local hard disk
for later reference. These log files are located in the %systemroot% directory and end
with a log file extension. After every successful and unsuccessful step of the installation
routine, a detailed description of the action is appended to the various log files
for later reference. Referring to these log files will uncover the nature of any problems
experienced, even if the installation routine could complete successfully. If the
installation routine fails, identifying the last log entries written helps isolate the
nature of the failure.