Problem installing XP on a SATA drive

mckrooz

n00b
Joined
Feb 27, 2004
Messages
49
Just got a Dell Dimension 8400 yesterday. Went to partition the 80G drive for my needs and used fdisk to delete partitions. I popped in my XP recovery disk and it started to load some files then got to a point where it prompts 3 options. Install XP, Repair XP, and some other option. I select to install XP and says that no hard disk can be found. I copied the SATA/RAID drivers onto a floppy from the Resource CD and copied them by pressing F6 and I still get the same result. Any ideas?

I called tech support and they are sending me a new HD with XP installed on it but I still would like to get this resolved for future reference.
 
He he...they are sending you a new hard drive, instead of helping the problem. I guess all the articles are true about Dell's falling reputation. But, like suggested, what controller? If it's an Intel board, it should be easy to find drivers for it.
 
Intel P4 3.0G HT 800FSB

I went to Dell and d'loaded the drivers for my board. There was only one driver available for my system
 
Mostly likely the 865 or 875 chipset....so you could find the Intel Serial ATA drivers and use them. You could try to use the ones on Abit's site for any of their boards with the same chipsets.
 
Ok, I got it working. What I had to do was go into BIOS and select 'drives', go down to SATA and enable SATA/ATA and Windows installs after that. This is NOT a default setting.
 
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