XP Repair/Install Freezes on 9150

My 9150 recently had a HD crash. Restore D/N Work so I tried to do a repair using the Reinstallation CD. At the setup screen where you are given a choice to Repair or install, the setup freezes and I have to power off to restart. Tried it with an XP Full CD and same problem. Bought a new Maxtor HD and same Pbm. Tried my 2 HD's in a friends 9150 and had the same problems there. Any suggestions? Bill

Responses(2)

jackshack

6.4K Posts

0

May 14th, 2007 20:00

The Dimension 9150 uses SATA hard drives; an off the shelf copy of the CD will not likely have the RAID/AHCI drivers that are normally installed at Dell. If you go to bios setup and browse around you should find an option to set the SATA controller to RAID ON, or possibly RAID/AHCI, and RAID Autodetect/ATA. This last puts the controller in compatible ATA mode which doesn't work for RAID but does usually let you use a single drive with the built-in drivers that come with Windows XP. If you wish to use the RAID/AHCI you must load with a Windows CD that has the RAID/SATA drivers slipstreamed into the setup, or have a floppy drive and disk that you can use to load them when the "Press F6" message comes up. The OEM Windows reinstallation CD that comes from Dell normally has these so that is the one I would stick with.

Message Edited by JackShack on 05-14-2007 04:09 PM

wgslater

4 Posts

0

May 16th, 2007 17:00

Thanks, I got by my original XP Hang by following a previous post that said use PS2 mouse and keyboard. Darned if the install didn't proceed to the next step and now say it can't see the hard drive, even though it's shown in the bios.

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XP Repair/Install Freezes on 9150