I'm sure about the error. I looked at the knowledge base, too, and did a
search on the Microsoft site and found nothing.

I have a MAGNELL Recovery CD and a floppy disk that says Windows ME
ESD111500. Both came with the computer.

There are a couple of reasons that I want to reinstall Windows ME before XP.
The first is like you mentioned, my recovery CD has Windows ME. Another is
that the software that came with the computer is on the MAGNELL disk, too,
and I have no way of knowing how to pull out the programs that I want. Three
years ago when I had to format the drive, I just reinstalled everything and
uninstalled the software that I didn't want before adding the software that I
purchased. It worked okay then, but I had not upgraded the BIOS and I had
not put in the larger HDD or added the memory.

I read something on the internet about a protection that Microsoft built
into the version of Windows that manufacturers used that caused it to fail to
install if any components had been changed from the original configuration.
Would this be what is hanging me? How do I get around it?

I can and will pull the extra memory until I get everything back.

Any other suggestions?

--
Bruce


"Mike M" wrote:

Bruce,

SU0173 Are you sure about this error? I ask because not only is the
error not reference in KB129971 ""SU" Error Message List for Windows 95,
Windows 98, and Windows Me Setup"
(http://support.microsoft.com?kbid=129971) but I can also find no
reference to this error number in the confidential partners knowledge
base.

What media are you using for your install? A Microsoft Win Me CD, and OEM
Win Me CD or an OEM Recover disk? Note that having 640MB of RAM installed
is also going to cause problems. Try temporarily reducing this and then
when Win Me is installed add the lines
[VCache]
MaxFileCache=512000
to the file system.ini after which you can add back the rest of the
memory. For details see MS KB 253912 - ""Out of Memory" Error Messages
with Large Amounts of RAM Installed"
(http://support.microsoft.com?kbid=253912). The reason is that allocating
more than 512MB of RAM to vcache will exhaust all available upper memory
addresses and thus prevent them being used for other purposes. Note that
this will still mean that all memory is available to applications but is
simply limiting the amount used as virtual cache memory.

I do have one last question though and that is I don't really understand
why you need to install Win Me if you are going to then upgrade to XP? Is
this because you have an XP upgrade disk and only have a Win Me Recovery
disk?
--
Mike Maltby



Bruce wrote:

I have a five year old ABS Athlon system with 640MB RAM, 40 GB HDD,
DVD Drive, CD Burner, floppy, etc. I recently updated bios, then
upgraded from Windows ME to XP in order to use new software. My HP
printer would not install and between HP tech support and me and the
possible failure of my old HDD, we messed up my system enough that it
made sense to reinstall. While at it, I decided to replace the HDD.
I removed the 40 GB drive, installed the 80 GB as the master and
started off.

After a couple of botched attempts to get the Maxtor software to
setup the HDD, it finally did. When I tried to use my recovery disk
and Windows disk that came with my system, I got a error message
stating that this version of Windows could not be installed. SU0173.

All of my software either came with the computer or was purchased
from Comp USA, Staples, etc. and is legitimate.

My desire is to go back and reinstall ME to make sure that I would
not lose all of my initial software. How can I resolve the issue of
the error message and get ME to setup?