First of all, let me say hi to everyone on these forums, this is my first post here and i feel bad for asking for help in my first post as i doubt my experience with computers will ever be able to help any of you.

But i'm in a fix and need some advice.

I have a friends laptop with Windows XP Home Edition SP1 installed on it. He needs to get it up to SP2, however, when i download and try to install SP2 i get the same error message each time.

"Cannot copy setup50.exe". The file is there and complete so i have no idea why it wont copy. And the really bad thing is, each time it does this, it forces me to cancel the install and then says that "SP2 is only partially installed and may not work correctly". Then i restart and the laptop wont even boot up, so i'm forced to use the windows installer cd to repair the system putting me back to square one with no updates.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, like i said before, this is a friends laptop and he knows NOTHING about computers so he turns to me for his pc help and i'm coming up short on this one.

Thanks Again - Ant

u can just install windows service pack 3...

I would first try Windows Updates . That way if there are any files missing it will load them. Or should I say bring up up to date.

The weird thing is the file isn't missing. I can find it and see it on my hard drive and even select it when the installer asks me to browse for the correct location.

Tried to install SP3 and half way thorugh i get a similar message. "cannot copy nsetup.exe"

Any other ideas?

Try Start - Run - chkdsk /r

This won't run until you reboot the system but does sort out misplaced files and indices.
Then some more housekeeping, in particular the registry...

get CCleaner from CCleaner - Download
Then:

CCleaner:

Under the Cleaner section: select “Run Cleaner”

Under the Registry section: select “Scan for Issues”

(when asked about registry “Backup” save & then accept where it saves it to.)
then “Fix Selected Issues”

Do the Registry option again.. (and again until no issues found)

OK, had a weekend with the problem and all is sorted now.

Was on with MS Chat for 2 and a bit hours and eventually the system was just unstable. Backed up all the important stuff on my ipod and reformatted. Fresh windows, used a manual SP3 download, installed 1st time. Hurrah!!

Many Thanks for all the advice and help. Heres hoping it stays running well.

Thanks again - Ant