Dell Dimension XPS Gen3 - not recognizing hard drive 1

[user9876]

I have a dell dimension xps gen3 hard drive. When i boot up it says it can't find files and won't start. I attempt to reinstall, but it says it can't find the hard drives when i choose to repair. The hard drive appears in the bios and when i do the dell diagnostics, it recognizes the hard drive, but there are errors reading and writing to the drive. I got a new SATA drive and put it in, the BIOS recognizes it and when I go to install Windows XP on it, the same message appears, cannot find the harddrive. Is there something else I have to do to get the new drive recognized, I thought it was the hard drive, because the diagnostics recognized it.

 

[paparazi]

user9876
I don't know the specifics of this particular setup but I'm guessing you need to install the "third party" drivers for the SATA controller.
This you do right at the beginning of XP install when it says something like: Press F6 to install third party drivers.
But first you will need to be armed with the appropriate drivers on floppy disk.
These drivers should have been supplied on the motherboards driver disk (or download from Dell support for your model)
Extract onto floppy
Press F6 when requested
Insert floppy
Install this thirsd party driver
And hopefully it will then recognise your SATA hard drive and continue to install XP

Martin

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[wdkoenig]

Paparazi,
having just rebuilt an XPS Gen3 system - you are CORRECT! had to use the Dell Driver disk and copy the drivers to a floppy - once that done upon re-installing hit F6 early on and have the floppy ready.

wdk