Sunday, March 4, 2012

Windows 8 Consumer Preview - 0x0000260 error

Just tried Windows 8 Consumer Preview x32 on my old Sony Vaio VGN-A115B and while the installation worked fine, at first boot it failed with error 0x0000260.

From what I could find, it appears this is a problem happening when running the software in virtualisation without PAE/NX features enabled or on older Pentium M laptops.

http://superuser.com/questions/396053/error-0xc0000260-when-installing-windows-8-consumer-preview-on-an-old-laptop

Mine is a Pentium M “Banias” 1.5 Ghz – I guess it was bound to happen at some point with legacy hardware, I just wish maybe I knew before I went through the trouble of installing it in the first place...

Sony Vaio VGN-A115B

Windows 8 Consumer Preview - error 0x0000260

2 comments :

  1. Thanks for posting this. I wrongly assumed I had burned a bad DVD; during the burning verification process, the Windows 7 OS-integrated burner failed. I proceeded nonetheless, but got the 0x0000260 error. Same again with a higher integrity Verbatim disc. And it was the CPU all along. At least now I know.

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  2. Sorry to hear it happened to you as well - W8 Developer Preview worked fine on the same hardware and I installed it through PXE booting from the ISO, which I checked the checksum after download, in both cases. Anyways you might be better off with a new laptop or tablet going forward, better performance, battery life and so on, I know I'm looking to a W8 tablet myself, maybe as a nice Christmas present :-)

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