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Detector, a simple google search "asms file" comes out with pages and pages of people who encountered that very same problem when attempting to reinstall Win XP. As i said previously, Microsft itself proposes a 3 method fix
"The file 'Asms' on Windows XP Professional CD-ROM is needed" error message when you install Windows XP
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Zeb, thank you for suggesting it, but i suppose this is
F10, which i ran yesterday evening and resulted in
zero errors. I found the Recovery Console not to be end-user freindly, but tried of course CHKDSK and FIXBOOT, i can still try FIXMBR as you suggested but i am pessimistic.
Overall i begin to have a suspiscion, and may be
Detector or someone else would have a specialist opinion about it. May be 2 years ago a virus scan came up positive, and there was no fix ready, so i hired a person to come up and fix it. I was not impressed by the guy's competence, to say the least. As i was not with him all the time, I can't rule out that he has reinstalled Win XP on my computer from one of his own CDs. Now my question is:
is it possible that my attempts to "repair" Win XP encounters a conflict between the possibly Reinstalled version from the guy's CD, and my Win XP CD disk?
I tried most of what i can do myself. Being an amateur without experience, i am hesitant to do enter to deep in rigistry etc I am about ready to give up, that stupid "asms" begins to really go on my nerves.