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I bought a new external hard drive (WD Elements Portable); after plugging it into my Windows XP SP3 machine (a Dell Vostro 1015), the following message pops up:

Windows could not load the installer for volume. Contact your hardware vendor for assistance.

The hard drive works without any problems on a Windows XP SP2 and Windows 7 machine.

Any thoughts how to fix this?

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1 Answer 1

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Go to C:\Windows\System32 and rename sfcfiles.dll to sfcfiles.old. Next try copying the sfcfiles.dll file from C:\Windows\ServicePackFiles\i386 to C:\Windows\System32.

The one in that folder should be the latest version, but if that doesn't work, do a dir sfcfiles.dll /s from a Command Prompt in the C: drive root to find other versions. This worked for a number of people in this thread:

http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f10/windows-could-not-load-installer-33993.html

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  • There was no sfcfiles.dll in system32 at all, so coped from C:\windows\ServicePackFiles\i386 and hdd mounted! Thanks :)
    – lfx
    Commented Jul 16, 2011 at 12:27

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