No replies needed for this one - its information only.

I was installing XP Home via CD onto a customers PC. With 34 minutes remaining, it asked for the XP CD to be inserted even though the CD was still in the drive. I clicked cancel and the install proceeded, but when XP booted after install, the desktop looked like a bare Win 98 install. Checked through - no XP themes at all. Completely minimal.
Re-formated HDD, disabled everything possible in BIOS, and tried again.
Same problem.

I solved this little problem by installing XP and getting the bare desktop. Then I copied the entire i386 directly from the CD to the HDD and then did a fresh install but keeping the existing file system. When Install asked for the CD, I pointed it at the i386 directory on the HDD and setup carried on normally, asking for the CD 3 times. On first boot the system looked fine with no problems apparent.

The problem as far as I can tell, was caused by the customers old CD-rom drive. I did not have DMA access, just PIO. This caused XP Setup to loose contact with the drive and hence ask for the CD. The drive was swapped out recently as his 52-speed had packed up. The drive fitted was one from an old PC he had lying about.

I posted this as Google came up with zilch on the subject, as did Microsoft themselves.

You never know - someone might come across this problem in the future!

Gav