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Dell XPS 400 New Hard Drive Help.
Hi all, I am needing some help. I just replaced my hard drive in my Dell XPS 400. Service Tag
I took the old drive out because it was bad. Replaced it with a new WD "Green" SATA 500gb drive.
I put my Windows XP disk in to my cd/dvd drive and booted to it. I then come to a scree that asks if I want to install Windows. I hit enter to install and a blue screencomes up and says "Windows was unable to locate a drive to install on, please press F3 to quit setup."
I went to the download drives to see if I needed to install some drivers or something but after I did a search for my computer using the service tag, I could not locate any "drivers" that I would need to my hard drive.
Can someone point me to the drivers I need to download? I take it that I will need to in stall some raid drivers or something. But don't know what I need for sure.
Also, the bio's does see the new drive on the system.
<ADMIN NOTE : Service Tag removed per privacy policy>
osprey4
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4 Operator
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December 29th, 2009 10:00
Hi, In4sit:
You need to pay close attention during the installation procedure. XP prompts you for the RAID drivers, which are needed in order for the installation routine to recignize an SATA hard drive. There are two options for handling this. You'll need to go into BIOS setup before installing to change SATA options or the hard drive won't be found during XP install. Change the SATA options to combined from RAID/AHCI. The other option is to download the Intel Storage Matrix Manager and copy that to a floppy. You'll need to hit F6 to add additional drivers during the XP install. (This seems to work only with a floppy as XP gives no options other than A: drive.)
My recommendation would be to search the support site for a step-by-step installation procedure rather than rely on guesswork and trial and error.
Happy New year!
shesagordie
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December 29th, 2009 17:00
in4sit
If you are not using RAID, or do not have an internal floppy drive, enter the system setup, scroll down to drives, press Enter or + to expand the drive menu then down to "SATA Operation", press Enter.
Change the SATA operation mode to "RAID Autodetect/ATA" press ESC to save and exit the BIOS.
Then windows should install without a problem.
Bev.