Problem Reformatting HDD for 8400

when you boot from cd, it says press f6 if you are using a scsi or raid device. In this case you would need to press that since you have a SATA drive. However it will then ask you to provide the drivers from a floppy disk, so you will have to go on another comptuer and download the drivers to a floppy from your drive manuafacturers site. Either western digital or Seagate. If you dont have a floppy drive, then you need a full windows xp disc that includes sp2 which contains sata drivers, otherwise the "restore" disc wont work.

This is horrible. Wouldn't you know, I don't have a single floppy disk ANYWHERE. And thanks for the help, though, I'm pretty sure everything will go smoothly after I get my hands on a disk.

Alright. Thanks for the info. So, install disc with sp1 won't do the job?

if you have an sp1 disc, you can download sp2 update and "slipstream" so the disc will be an sp2 version. This means u dump the contents of your cd to a temp folder, download sp2, and follow the slipstream instructions. Then you burn this to a cd, and use it instead and it should work. Search google for instrucitons on how to slipstream

Lovely, more and more problems. After attempting to load the floppy, I get a screen saying "txtsetup.oem could not be found". Any ideas?

 

I installed two new drives and configured them to Raid 0 and have had nothing but problems using the F6 floppy disk method(I've tried Dells and Intels disks old and new version winxp home/pro/sp1/sp2 and always got an error. However I got it working...  slipstreaming drivers is the way to go! You should go to this site:

http://www.maximumpc.com/reprints/reprint_2005-01-05.html

 if you want I can email you the TXTSETUP. and WINNT files.  

Ok, just wanted to say thank you again for the help. Everything is in order now, but I'm having a few difficulties and don't know where to post about them.. so, pardon me if this is in the wrong area.

 

In my Device Manager, under the Other Devices heading, I'm having problems with the SM Bus Controller, an Unknown Device, Video Controller, and Video Controller (VGA Compatible). Anyone know what is wrong and/or how I can fix this?

 

Also, I'm guessing this has something to do with the video controller thing, but when I.. say, drag a window across the screen, it lags a bit and moves in little bursts. I didn't have this problem before reformatting. Any way to fix that?

You need to install the correct  video card drivers. Get them from dell or the video card manufactorer.

The packing list should contain the video card info but if  you want  go to www.dell.com then click home&office then scroll to service and support and select support from the drop down menu  then click product support menu and enter in your service tag (which should be located on the front of your tower above the USB ports and is also displayed in the BIOS.)

After you do that click downloads and fill in the appropriate fields and then download the driver. You should also check the video card's manufactorer site or windows update for the lastest version. I reccomend updating all your devices (network card,sound card, chipset and BIOS) 

Ok, everything but the video controller is now fixed. I still havne't figured that one out. I'm not exactly sure what to download for that nor do I remember what kinda of video card I have. Its a GeForce, I know that much. I need try to remember these things in the future..