Manifest Parse Error…
You receive the following message: “Manifest Parse error: Invalid at top level of document” when installing Windows XP for the first time and the installation fails because it cannot correctly parse the CONTROLS.MAN file. At no point does Microsoft’s installation program allow you to select an alternate source location for the file. It doesn’t even allow you full command prompt access. And the Recovery Program is useless, as it doesn’t even allow you to copy directories or copy using wildcards!
That’s what happened to me, too, after I decided to give Microsoft one more chance to have one of its operating systems on my main computer. I must be a glutton for punishment, because rather than scrapping it completely, I decided to figure out how to get around the problem. Old habits, like most computers running Microsoft operating systems, die hard.
I’ve heard everything from “it’s a copy protection scheme” to “it locks you out after three installations”. I’ve even heard of hundreds of people who have experienced the error from fresh-out-of-the-shrink-wrap, boxed versions of Windows XP. I couldn’t even get my freshly opened XP CD direct from Dell to work properly. Also, many folks prefer to install from CD copies and keep the original disks in close-to-pristine condition, yet rumors abound that as many as 60-70% of the copies experience this same problem. It must be another one of those undocumented Microsoft features.
The /i386/asms/6000/msft/windows/common/controls/controls.man file on the CD is corrupt. Copy your entire CD to your harddrive, use my version of the CONTROLS.MAN file (don’t forget to change the file extension!), and burn another CD. In theory, you could copy the entire i386 directory to your harddrive, replace the damaged file, and then run \i386\winnt.exe to install, but if you really want a reliable and stable system, it is not wise to install the XP operating system over an existing, older OS. So burning a CD is the only viable option for a fresh, clean install.Whether the new OS works well enough to dissuade me from breaking down and purchasing an iMac remains to be seen…
OK ok… I just got a burnt copy of Xp… That’s right burnt. And I got the same message as everyone else something about not be able to copy some folder. I’m trying to change the controls.man, hopefully it works. I’m really lost when it comes to burning images with Ahead Nero, can anyone help?
Someone mentioned that Disc-At-Once and being sure to Finalise the CDburn fixes the problem - They are spot on… Unfortunately i had to drive back into work to try this, but it was well worth the drive in…
Thanks guys!!
I’m pretty certain those two steps ARE required Brad.
I uploaded a copy of the CONTROLS.MAN file to my “Manifest Parse Error” site for those having trouble creating their own.
http://www.geocities.com/zrantheus/
Good luck.
ZD
Richard,
thanks for the wealth of information you’ve collated and thanks to the community of contributors. List me as another victim of the abovementioned ‘manifest’ error. I had other options for restoring WinXP Pro on my PC (ie vendor disks to recover back to factory settings which included WinXP) but I tried a friend’s WinXP Setup CD to compare hardware support for an existing CD burner …an internal HP CDWriter Plus 8200 which has a top burn speed of 4X and came supplied with Adaptec Easy CD Creator 3.5c. It’s a trooper that’s served well for 18 months and highlighted the “manifest” error. I empathise with Tom Miller … I too have initiated at least 10 iterations of “format-hard-drive, install WinXP” but scrapping the burner was at the bottom of the ‘culprit’ list ie. there are 6,500 files that are burned on the WinXP Setup CD ….
a) why are there less than a handful of files bearing grief ??!!
b) you can burn a dámn lot of CDs using any number of CD burning freeware or shareware for the price of a new CD burner
c) there’s no guarantee the new CD burner will fix the problem
My problems appear attributable to the CD burning software. During the recent repeated rebuilds of my PC, I engaged the services of a colleague (well, actually…the colleague was useless but their Win XP CD was instrumental). Starting with a clean hard drive, my colleague’s CD installed WinXP Pro from ‘go to whoa’ without any grief yet my copy of that CD bogged down with he ‘manifest’ error. Went to Bill Gates’ support web links and their suggestion is ‘return to vendor or buy a new CD’…. the cursade was on …. Bill Gates’ “manifest” error was stinking up the corridors of my mind. I had used Adapter Easy CD Creator option “CD Copier” in the hope it would make a mirror copy that would be equally WinXP Setup bootable on a clean hard drive. Well, it appears that ‘CD Copier’ is a loose term….they probably should have called it “CD Approximator”. I’ve had ‘buffer underrun’ errors during CD burnin but never discrimate file erosion. I’ve made 3 copies using burn speed of 1X, 2X and 4X all resulting in the different versions of corrupted file CONTROLS.MAN … all occurrences of the file showed 2K on disk, 2 of the 3 were empty (well …. might have had non-display characters but I couldn’t be bothered …. we’d be quibbling on different degrees of error),the third occurrence contained text reflecting the make/model of the CD Burner… go figure. I then copied WinXP setup folders/files from my colleague’s CD to my harddrive and then used Adapter CD Creator to create a CD layout and burn the files and there were no curruptions in the files, albeit the disks were not suitable for WinXp setup bootable on clean hard drive. I then repeated the burn of all the files with the exception of CONTROL.MAN leaving the disc open, then added the file on a second burn and it was still in perfect condition. (as you can clearly see, the medical association warns that Bill Gates is a health hazard !!!) At this point, i now have 8-9 CDs pinned on the cork board ….. 10 more and I’ll have enough for a mock-up 18-wheeler MACK truck with bogie.
Today I downloaded 30-day trial CD burning software ‘Alcohol120 v1.4.0 Build 114′ (self extracting 4Mb EXE available from http://www.alcohol-software.com),
installed it in 30 seconds, fired it up, hit the ‘Copy Wizard’, chose maximum speed for the CR-RW (yep ….used all the available 4X it could muster)
and out popped a sweet copy. The trooper HP CDWriter Plus 8200 is still going strong and it’s Adaptec that’s on the ‘Re-consider’ list. Another colleague has made a copy of the CD using a CD-RW purchased last weekend and that CD appears useable. The fact that most people are getting clean copies using current CD burning software suggests it’s not the hardware that’s at fault. Another observation i’ve just noticed is that the *.MAN files in question have perhaps the longest path names on the CD… coincidence ???!!! …AM 21/01/2003 ESDT Australia
Worked for me! Jus’ copied the whole contents of the XP CD to HD and copy and pasted Richies text above into Notepad, replaing the whatever file it was. Got no errors and installing my second copy as we (I) speak.
I read with great interest the experience of the many downtrodden users regarding the Manifest Parse Error. I’m not sure if my problem is related. My wife purchased a DELL Inspiron 2650 laptop from DELL online in Sep 2002. My system came with XP PRO and SP1, IE 6.0, Office 2002, and other bundled software pre-installed. On many occasions my system just hanged, sometimes with as little as two or three appplications loaded. Outside of the Office 2002 suite I use Quickbooks. A local PC technician told my wife that it was normal since XP has a number of quirks still to be ironed out. I recently installed the System Mechanic utility to scan my registry since I became fed up with the persistent system hangs. The results revealed several invalid (orphaned) entries in the following registry locations:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WBEM\WDM
“sample value name is C:\WINDOWS\system32\advapi32.dll[MofResourceName]“.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WBEM\WDM\DREDGE
“sample value name is C:\WINDOWS\System32\DRIVERS\ACPI.sys[ACPIMOFResource]”
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VolumeCaches\Active Setup Temp Folders
“value name is Folder”
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\SideBySide\Installations\ x86_Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls_6595b64144ccf1df_6.0.10.0_x-ww_f7fb5805
“sample value name is Codebase” and “value data is C:\WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles\i386/controls.man”
N.B. all the *.man files are listed as invalid (orphaned)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Synaptics\SynTP\Install
“sample value name is MouseInf”
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\SharedDLLs
“sample value names are C:\WINDOWS\System32\MSXML3A.DLL” and “C:\DOCUME~1\HEATHE~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\_ISTMP1.DIR\_ISTMP0.DIR\mediabuild20.dll”
I contacted DELL on 13-FEB-2003 and they sent me an XP hardware diagnostic utility - CD110210.exe - via email to run. It showed me that all my hardware devices except the Roxio Easy CD-ROM drive were okay. The CD-ROM drive failed the confidence test - READ, SEEK, WRITE, and AUDIO and was deemed incompatible. DELL Support indicated that if my hardware devices were deemed okay then I will need to reinstall my operating system, which I dread. DELL only supplied me with a reinstallation CD rather than an original operating system CD. They said that is all I will need for the job.
Since running the diagnostic test the system does not hang as often. I have to get back to DELL Support with the results. However, I am concerned about the number (55) and type of invalid registry entries that System Mechanic listed.
Would you please shed some light here? Thanks a $1,000,000 in advance. I regret being so lengthy, but I wanted to provide you with essential info to get a meaningful and effective response.
Cheers
MartinP
Another solution:
I had the same problem with setup giving me multiple .man file errors. My solution was to use Fireburner 2.1.7 to burn the ISO that I downloaded from MSDN.
It seems that the install process or the image itself is VERY sensitive to which program you use to burn the CD.
Rick
The problem is you are attempting to install an unauthorized copy of Windows XP. It is NOT a security feature. The easiest solution is to get another copy preferably from another more reliable source. The parse error originated when the original person was attempting to copy the windows xp on to another disc tried to copy from the windows xp cd-rom over to his hard drive and then to his cd burner. That’s the part when the security measure kicks in. What needs to be done is to use Roxio and do a disc to disc burn.
This site is a lifesaver! Can’t thank you enough for all the help it provided. I copied the I386 folder to my HD and modified the CONTROL.MAN file but rather than copying it back to a CD-R just told it to look there rather than the CD when it prompted. Worked like a charm! I built a new comp and was rather annoyed with having to use Win98 (FIRST ADDITION!). It was a major step up. However, will my OS be stable? I only did the upgrade and was wondering if it would be better or improve my proformance to do a full fresh copy of XP?
same problem tried your fix didn’t work just need a working copy of controls.man can you provide?
please and thanks.
Norman