I recently attempted to install Windows XP Service Pack 3 on my vintage 2003 Dell Inspiron 8500 laptop.  And for the first time ever, I encountered a problem which I could not fix myself, or find a solution for out there on Google.

The problem I had was that the SP3 install would go belly up about 2/3 of the way in with a cryptic "Failed to install catalog files" error message.

I tried for the better part of a week to isolate and resolve the problem with no success.  I found some articles regarding this error and suggested fixes in the Microsoft Knowledge Base, but none solved my problem.  I also found a few suggested fixes via Google, but again they did not solve the problem.