try to take ownership of the files, if this does not work, then boot a linux live environment and do it that way
Be sure there are no mounted images in temp folder. If you are on 7 or newer host, you can check it using NTLite and umount them If they are still mounted - this should happends If you terminate process on Upgrading setup engine phase.
That's not true. If you have something to contribute such as abandonware software/OS/game which is at least 10 years old or a beta version of them regardless of the age, then you don't have to pay anything. Also simply paying/donating will not get you FTP Access.
After some wrangling I got the files to delete. edit: OK XP install done, now hopefully the rest succeeds.
Is there a specific version of win7/win10 install media I should be using? my windows 7 is an MSDN ISO 7601.24214.180801-1700.win7sp1_ldr_escrow_CLIENT_ULTIMATE_x86FRE_en-us.iso I grabbed a win10 1803 x86 iso using windows ISO downloader since I thought 21H2 might be too new.
Both should be OK for XP2ESD process. Don't forget to unmount images as I mentioned in post 924. Your symptoms are caused by badly mounted and unmounted images. Even with deleted TEMP\boot you still need to unmount them
@George King Thanks! P.S dism /cleanup-wim resolved all the problems I was having, seems it's working fine now.
@George King Is it possible to install XP2ESD without USB? I need to install it on a laptop which is currently running 8.1. Perhaps WinNTSetup?