Dealing with error “Setup was unable to verify drive”

One may come across various setup problems while installing Windows OS in the system. When you install Windows XP, you might receive the following error message:

“Setup was unable to verify drive C:
Your computer may not have enough memory to examine the drive, or your Windows XP CD may contain some corrupted files.
To continue, press Enter.”

Now if you press Enter, you are flooded with another error message, which is something like,

“Setup cannot access the CD containing the Windows XP installation files.”

Reasons behind this error

This problem may occur due to one of the following reasons:

• Motherboard is not compatible with Windows XP

• BIOS of your system is not compatible with Windows XP

• Hard disk is damaged

• Windows XP setup CD is corrupt

Resolution to this problem

In order to sort out this error, you need to act patiently and follow the following steps accordingly. Otherwise you would have to take help of third party Windows recovery software to rescue all previous data.

• As a first step, check out the compatibility of both motherboard and BIOS with Windows XP Operating System. Use the Microsoft Windows Upgrade Advisor tool that is located on the Windows XP Setup CD. The Upgrade Advisor checks your current hardware and software to determine whether your computer is ready to upgrade to Windows XP. If you run Upgrade Advisor while you are connected to the Internet, and if your computer requires updates that are available on the Windows Update Web site, Upgrade Advisor can find and install the updates for you.

• Secondly check your hard disk if it’s in healthy condition for Windows XP installation or not. Confirm that your hard disk or file system is not damaged. To do so, start your computer from the Windows XP CD-ROM, load Microsoft Recovery Console, and then use the CHKDSK command-line tool. If CHKDSK reports that it cannot access your hard disk, then probably it’s the case of hardware failure. Examine all the cable connections and any jumper settings on your drive.

• If CHKDSK reports that it cannot fix all the hard disk problems, then your file system or Master Boot Record (MBR) may be damaged or no longer accessible. Try appropriate Recovery Console commands such as fixmbr and fixboot.

• Repartition or reformat your hard disk.

Going with above measures you are made sure of resolving this issue. Now if you have reformatted your hard disk then all your previous data had gone lost. So you would be in need of Windows recovery software to deal with corrupt, damaged, deleted, lost or inaccessible data. It scans the corrupt and damaged hard drive or partition to locate and retrieve the lost and inaccessible data.