Install problems of XP onto a Dell PC?

Question

A friend of mine had XP on her Dell Dimension 9150 PC but she was 'advised' by someone else to upgrade to Vista. Since then, she has had all sorts of performance issues and so I suggested that she may wish to roll back to XP - and I agreed to do it for her.

Well, when I try and install XP from a bootable CD, it gets as far as the screen where it asks if you wish to install a new copy, or repair an old copy etc and then it fails, stating that it cannot find a hard drive for the install. But the hard drive works because it boots up into Vista!

WTF?

Anyway, I upgraded the BIOS to see if that was the problem. No luck.

Anyone got any ideas as to what to try next?

Answer 1

She probably SATA hard drive per their comptuer spec. When XP came out, they did not have SATA yet. With XP installation disk with service pack 2, it covers most SATA drivers but not all of them that are on the market.

When it asks for the custom drivers(such as SCSI controller) for hard drives at the beginning of the installation, follow the instruction to install custom controller drivers for your sata controller(I think it is F6, but I'm not totally sure). I think you need to download the SATA controller driver from Dell site.

Answer 2

Go into the system BIOS and search for the setting labeled "SATA Operation" or the like. Change this from AHCI to compatability mode or IDE mode.



XP is most likely not seeing the drive because the computer may have a SATA hard drive controller which was released after XP was made.

Answer 3

Remove the Hard Drive from the Dell. Switch the jumper to Slave. Attach to the middle plug on your IDE cable in your computer. Boot your computer. Right click My Computer • Manage • Disk Management. Should see the Dell hard drive. Right click the slaved hard drive & Delete partition, then format in NTFS. Once formatted shut down computer, remove the hard drive, switch the jumper to its original setting & install in the Dell. Insert the XP disk & install.



ÕÕ

~

Answer 4

I can tell you whats wrong



the reason this happens is that Vista has a different "layout" to windows XP and takes over the MBR (master boot record)



In order to install XP you normally have to fix the MBR first



However i suggest you read this guide on how to install XP, with Vista installed first as this is much easier to do



http://apcmag.com/how_to_dual_boot_vista_and_xp_with_vista_installed_first__the_stepbystep_guide.htm





Hope that helps!

:D



You can also read this guide

http://www.chuckegg.com/how-to-remove-microsoft-vista-and-replace-it-with-windows-xp/





One more thing, make sure you format the Hard drive to NTFS (not ntfs quick) when installing XP

Answer 5

try tweaking the bios to boot from the cd/dvd drive first; change the sequence of booting up. then a statement asking you press any button if you like to boot up using the cd. press any key.