Cannot re-install XP Home

[MarcLodge]

Hi all,
I have an old Dell Dimension that keeps blue screening. I called someone in from a local computer shop and he installed some bit of driver finding software which solved the issue for a couple of weeks, but then it returned. Rather than call him back I decided to hive off the data and re-install XP from the original Dell supplied disk.

First problem was that the machine could not find the hard drive. After looking on the Dell website I found an update to do with the drive which after I followed instructions created a floppy disk which if I press F6 on re-install allows the disk to be read.

First question - do I have to do this because the drive is non-standard, or because the motherboard needs it? Would this still happen if I tried a different SATA drive?

Anyway, I tried to install XP and it failed when trying to write a whole host of files to the drive. I therefore re-formatted the drive and this appeared to get round that problem, but when the machine rebooted and went into the setup process it blue screened again. I re-booted a number of times, but always the same, so I began the re-install process again, only to end with the same thing.

Wondering if it was something in the BIOS, I reset the BIOS to factory settings and now when I attempt to re-install, the machine gets to the F8 windows agreement screen and when I F8 bluescreens.

There's a BIOS upgrade on the Dell site, but I'm a bit dubious about upgrading.

My thoughts at the moment are to get another hard drive and try installing it on that, but I don't really understand this SCSI bit, so if anybody could enlighten me as to what this is all about, and maybe offer some advice on what to try next, I'd be very grateful.

Many thanks.
Marc

 

[intelwizrd]

The driver disk and pressing F6 is needed because the windows installation disks do not have drivers for every drive controller. It doesn't matter what drive you use, the driver is for the controller that your drive connects to (probably integrated on the MB). I run into this all the time when installing systems with SATA drives. Make sure you have the latest drivers for the SATA controller. Also, sometimes a BIOS update can fix problems but not sure if that will help in your case. As a personal practice, I try to make sure the BIOS and other firmware is updated when ever I am working on a system and I have the opportunity.

This sounds kind of like a hardware issue. One thing to check if you have multiple RAM chips, you can try booting the system with only 1 stick inserted and see if any one particular chip causes the failure. I have also seen slots go bad so move them around as well if your MB supports it.

Does dell still put those A-B-C-D lights on the back of their systems? If your system has them, check to see if they are indicating a hardware problem.

There are other possible problems but the last 3 desktop failures i have encountered were RAM related.

 

[MarcLodge]

Hi intelwizrd,
thanks for your prompt post. So the F6 thing is because the motherboard has a SATA controller that is,let's say, non-standard and the windows installation disk doesn't recognise it.

I'll try looking at the memory and I think I've got a bit of software called memtest that I can run that I believe test the memory (unsurprisingly!). I give that a go and see what it shows.

As another possible solution, the machine connects to two CD players using the big flat cable that I believe is IDE or PATA. Could I swap one of those (who needs two CDs anyway?!) for an IDE hard drive?

Marc

 

[intelwizrd]

If you think the hard drive is the cause, you could connect an IDE drive to the system and try and do an install off of that. I can't remember if it will cause any performance issues being on the same cable. I'm sure someone here can speak to that. At the very least, it would allow you to find out if the hard drive is the cause of your problems without having to buy another hard drive.

 

[vacunita]

XP's installation did not by default have rivers for the SATA controllers which appeared a few years after XP.

It may be a problem with the current SATA drive. If at all possible download UBCD (Ultimate Boot CD) burn it and run a few of the drive tests from it, see if it reports anything wrong with the hard drive.

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html

You'll need to burn the ISO onto a CD as an image so it expands the files.

Alternatively if your BIOS supports it you may want to look for a Legacy mode, or IDE mode for the SATA controller. Most of the time that lets XP setup detect the SATA drive without any additional drivers.

You could get an IDE drive and replace one of the optical drives with it. You'll likely have to change the jumper settings on the HD, and the optical drive to have them work correctly.

Or simply go out and buy a new SATA drive. SATA has the advantage that any SATA drive will work, heck even SATA laptop drives can be plugged directly into desktop SATA controllers.

I doubt you have a SCSI adapter, so you shouldn't worry about SCSI at all. It just the wording for the XP setup which is a tad misleading.

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Phil AKA Vacunita
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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

Behind the Web, Tips and Tricks for Web Development.

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[BadBigBen]

It would also help heeps, knowing what the BSOD ERROR code is!!!

by the sounds of it, you may have the wrong driver, I know certain chipsets you had to specify which driver to use during install, actually one driver with 5 or more configs, and choosing the wrong one would at times behave the way you describe it at the moment...

btw. good advice you have been getting so far, e.g MemTest and HDD test, so be sure to follow up on those...

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"