Comments on: WinXP SESSION3_INITIALIZATION_FAILED installation fix

by: moe

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 17:19:27 +0000

hey, i get this problem as well. i just installed new ram and now i get this BSOD. it happens when i try to boot xp from harddrive. when i try a re-install from cd, it says there is no harddrive, although the BIOS recognizes it….
i guess i’ll have to get a new HD?

by: YNOL

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 06:36:32 +0000

Yeahppp… Once more, I have a Sony PCG-C1XS laptop. I needed to instal XP PRO, but, since it doesn’t have a built-in CD-ROM or floppy drive. I have an external floppy and CD-ROM that can be plugged into USB. This laptop is very small, so it has only one USB. The CD-ROM has a USB to ATAPI converter. I can boot from the floppy, but not from the CD-ROM for some reason (checked the bios and boot sequence is ok). After 4 days working this… Finally I got to transfer my XP CD files in the drive on a second partition and running the instalation just to get the da*&% “SESSION3_INITIALIZATION_FAILED” error… 3 times using different methods. Just to figuring out the installation failure turned out to be the XP CD…It had a scratch…

by: wolfeyes333

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 18:02:03 +0000

The first post is awesome.got a new motherboard installed i cleaned the disk.made sure everything was connected and atm everything is looking gd on the install.Thx for the post.u dont know how crazy those blue screens get me.

by: rob

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 10:55:54 +0000

i recieved this message after a year of working xp. nothing to do with instalation. i think my hard drive,cd, has bust or a connection somwhere has fallen out

by: Ivan

Sat, 14 Apr 2007 03:37:52 +0000

I just had this problem too. (thanks for keeping this blog post up!)
Turns out I had a power cord going a front-panel that was suppoesd to have a sound card installed on the mobo as well. i pulled out the connection and next attempt it worked.

it seems like xp will throw this error if *anything* is wrong with the install procedure at all. bad error messaging but at least its reliable.

by: Leon

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 14:38:16 +0000

On a Duron 1600 machine with a properly installed XPPro-Sp1 (upgraded from W98), I could not IN ANY WAY go beyond the Session3_Initialisation_failure for an clean install, booting from CD. I tried: new memory, new cddrive, new HD, change hdcable from UltraATA to std, change cdrom to other channel, change 3 different XPPro-SP2 cd’s.
UNTIL THIS: Switched to CDrom XPHome-SP1… No Problems ! ( except that I have no licence key for it….) Would try XPPro-Sp1, if I can find one

by: Ron

Sun, 31 Dec 2006 09:17:37 +0000

I have this problem now as well, and it’s not due to the CDROM - I was not installing windows, mine just refuses to boot from the hard drive, it gets a far as showing the loading XP screen then reboots, I have tried a different hard drive which I know has a good working installation on, and I still get the BSOD.

I have disconnected everything on the mobo and even tried a different graphics card and IDE cable, so I think its a mother board problem.

by: Tman

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 05:37:13 +0000

I just received this error last night. I’ve been getting the error about every two weeks or so. I leave my machine on pretty much all day too. Anyway, after doing another update, I get this error message. I usually just break out the bootdisk and reghost my machine with my latest image.

This approach beginning to be time consumming. So I don’t know if I have a failed hard drive or something else. It was running just fine and I was in the middle up upgrading my divx codecs once again to 6.4.

Freaking windows!! I’m looking for a fix now. Before I have to reghost and lose a weeks worth of data. POS XP!!

by: ANDREW PIERCE

Sun, 17 Sep 2006 09:49:17 +0000

Thanks for posting this. You just saved me some aggravation I am sure:)

by: hjl

Thu, 10 Aug 2006 02:05:20 +0000

Gilrim,

Agree that unreadable media is a good reason to fail the installation, but it would probably help a lot of people if it had more graceful and informative user feedback than the BSOD that’s displayed now. There have been a lot of people finding this post in search of a fix for “WinXP SESSION3_INITIALIZATION_FAILED”. Most retail users probably won’t know to search online for a fix, either.