Hi Eric,
I'm just starting with XP myself and I don't know the answer.
But I searched a bit and found that this is a common problem.
I'm pasting a few suggestions that I found. The first is quite specific
although it was written with reference to W2K. The others are just
general suggestions which showed up.
Good luck.   Bob
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For any that care: I DID find the solution to one of my problems. Here it
is: Setup cannot load the keyboard layout file Kbdus.dll? During the
install or upgrade to Windows 2000, you receive: Setup cannot load the
keyboard layout file Kbdus.dll. Setup cannot continue. Shut down or restart
your computer. You are installing to an existing NTFS volume and the ACL on
the root of the volume that currently has the $Win_nt$.~bt folder does NOT
allow access. To fix this problem:

If you are upgrading:
1. Restart the computer and select the boot entry for the O/S that is being
upgraded. It is still bootable.
2. Grant Administrators and System and Everyone Full Control on the root of
the volume that contains the $Win_nt$.~bt folder.
3. Restart your computer and setup will continue.

If you are performing a new installation:
1. Take the drive to another computer that is running the O/S that
formatted the drive that contains the $Win_nt$.~bt folder.
2. Grant the Everyone group Full Control on the root of the volume that
contains the $Win_nt$.~bt folder.
3. Replace the drive.
4. Restart your computer and setup will continue.

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Set bios to defaults
Try a different video card (not nvidia)
Try a PCI video card
download and install the appropriate WinXP device drivers.
any BIOS antivirus is disabled.
No third party formatting on your HD cuz XP don't like it!!!
don't format the drive.. just delete the partition and let xp format it.
Strip the computer to barebones before install


At 11/21/02, you wrote:
>At 04:05 AM 11/21/2002, Eric Tanenbaum wrote:
>>I've been trying to install XP Pro on a machine that was /is running
>>Windows 2000. As
>>the suggested upgrade strategy did not work, I tried a complete
>>installation. Although I
>>get further then before, the process halts with a message objecting to
>>'kbdus.dll'. (I'm
>>not sure why it is looking for that file as I am in the UK and think that
>>I specified
>>that as my location.)