Data Error (cyclic redundancy check) in attempting to install Windows XP Pro SP 2 (32-bit)

[J_Barton]

VM Fusion successfully installed on MacBook Pro with 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.6 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, Mac OS X ver 10.4.11. First attempt to install Windows XP SP 2 (32-bit) from CD received message "Data Error (cyclic redundancy check)" after all files copied. Installation of Windows would not proceed. Exchanged CD for new CD, attempted installation second time, received same error message at exactly same stage of installation. Also advised to install VMWare Tools within virtual machine, but cannot do so, of course, because no virtual machine created.

[WoodyZ · Accepted solution]

First attempt to install Windows XP SP 2 (32-bit) from CD received message "Data Error (cyclic redundancy check)" after all files copied. Installation of Windows would not proceed. Exchanged CD for new CD, attempted installation second time, received same error message at exactly same stage of installation.

My first suggestion would be to use a CD/DVD Test Disc and verify the CD/DVD-ROM is functioning properly.

My second suggestion would be to use /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app to Verify the Host's Hard Drive.

My third suggestion would be to make an ISO Image on a Known Good Working System and transfer the ISO Image to the target system and attempt to create the Virtual Machine using the ISO Image.

Note: It may be easier to try my third suggestion first however since you've received CRC Errors using two different discs it, on first glance, sound like a problematic CD/DVD-ROM Drive so I think testing the CD\DVD-ROM Drive and the Hosts Hard Disk are prudent steps.

If all checks out okay on the CD\DVD-ROM and Hard Disk then the only other suggestion I have is try uninstalling/reinstalling VMware Fusion however I think that is not the issue although it certainly can't hurt.

[amcnichol]

Did you ever find a solution to this problem? I am seeing the exact same thing on a Macbook with VMware Fusion 1.1.3 and Windows XP SP2. I always get quite sceptical when someone seems to be blaming a CDROM drive that works fine in all other instances. Curious to know if you were able to overcome this as I really need to run Windows and at this point with the money I have spent I probably should have purchased a separate Windows PC. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[admin]

It's the CD that is questionable, not the drive. The thing is that the XP install is failing in the same place each time, and that Fusion probably wouldn't cause such an error whereas a bad CD could.

[amcnichol]

Well I finally got it installed but it wasn't a CD problem. After reading some things on Microsoft's site I started wondering if this was a problem with VMware's ability to write to the single file virtual partition as I saw more messages about a hard drive failure than a CD failure. I purchased some disk utilities (iPartition and iDefrag) as Boot Camp couldn't seem to manage creating a partition successfully. After booting to a DVD with these tools, I was able to create a partition and then use Boot Camp to install Windows. I didn't see any cyclic redundancy errors with Boot Camp as I did with VMware easy? install. After completing the Boot Camp install I was then able to run the Boot Camp partition as a virtual machine in Fusion. It does work well now, but I must say after the hours I spent troubleshooting this and the fact that I had to buy to utilities for another $100 I feel like none of these products lived up to their promise.

[admin]

Boot Camp couldn't seem to manage creating a partition successfully

This suggests there might be something wrong with your disk, which could also cause errors in Fusion and other programs.

[amcnichol]

There is nothing wrong with my disk. The reason that Boot Camp couldn't create the partition is that it couldn't create a 20g partition as I didn't have a contiguous block that big available on my hard drive. I ran the checks on Disk Utilities and everything checked out okay. To my surprise I learned that OSX doesn't come with a defrag tool because they claim it is not necessary. After doing some investigating I found some strong recommendations for iDefrag. I went to the the Coriolis website to purchase that and also noticed they had a product called iPartition which lets you change the partition size without erasing any data. I bought both products (which are quite good by the way) and then ran iDefrag to create a larger free block on my drive. It worked quite well and I would suspect I could have used the Boot Camp partition utility this time around but I tried out iPartition instead. iPartition worked like a charm even if it was a tiny bit confusing to figure out initially. After automatically creating an OSX boot disk with the iPartition and iDefrag utilities, it let me shrink the size of my Macbook partition and create a new partition which I formatted with FAT. I then ran Boot Camp and told it to use the FAT partition. During the Windows installation, I reformatted the partition to NTFS and installed Windows with no problems at all. I did all of this after reading posts on the Microsoft site that the cyclic redundancy check error comes up more often with write errors than read errors. Once I used a physical rather than virtual partition all of my Windows installation problems seemed to go away. I still believe this is an obscure VMware error which one would suspect might be quite difficult to troubleshoot. Don't get me wrong, I think the product is great now that I have everything working. It's just that Boot Camp and Fusion seemed a much bigger challenge to get working than the hype would suggest. Thank goodness for the other disk utilities. I don't think I could have managed it without them. I was about to cave in and buy a cheap Windows PC if that didn't work.