Installing win XP professional over media center

Question

Hi,
Just bought XPS 400 with Media Center installed, i tried to install XP pro i can't. The partition did not recognize. i got an error message and the technical part was STOP 0X0000008e. i did an fdisk and reformat the drive and i got the same thing. Please help!

xcator · Answer

not sure if this is the issue, but worth a try http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q315335

donroro75 · Answer

i tried and it di not work.

i did an fdisk and reformat the hard and when i try to install xp pro i got the step where press F8 to agree and and press enter to sep xp. no hard drive recognized and i got a blue screen and the technical question was STOP 0X0000008E.

ejn63 · Answer

The XP boot CD has no native support for the SATA controller.

You will need:

An XP cd WITH SP2 on it (note: XP or XP SP1 WILL NOT WORK - the install will blue-screen when you load the SATA driver).
An internal (not USB) floppy diskette drive.
The floppy diskette with the SATA OS driver on it (download from support.dell.com).

Boot the XP CD, pause with F6 where indicated, insert the floppy and load the driver. Continue the install.

No floppy drive? You have two options:

Buy one, or
Make a slipstream XP CD with the SATA driver:

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sp2_slipstream.asp

donroro75 · Answer

thank you! I will try that.

royhud · Answer

I tried using a new Sata 2 drive and using my Dell XP Pro disk from my old 8400. After finish install would blue screen every time. Dell support finally helped me get to install but only if you change in Bios from AHCI to ATA. Check this: http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=xps_desk_hddr&message.id=1854#M1854. Hope this  helps

joe53 · Answer

donroro75: XP Media Center Edition is a superset of XP Pro, and thus you cannot install or upgrade it to XP Pro. MCE has all the functionality of XP Pro, except for the ability to join a domain.

royhud · Answer

Once he used fdisk MCE is no longer there so installing Pro would be from scratch.  You will have to go into bios and change the drive properties from AHCI now to ATA if you want to install XP Pro and not the MCE. Then you will not need the f6 floppy since system will only see drive as ATA not Sata. Otherwise if you just stick with XP MCE if you have the Dell OS disk with the system leave as is and still will not need the f6 option as Dell has it on the disk. Message Edited by royhud on 03-27-2006 01:28 AM

donroro75 · Answer

If you have a SATA drive and you want to install XP pro, you have to change the settings in BIOS to ATA. My question is how does that work logically. Because you still have the SATA drive, the only thing that you did is changing the settings but the drive is still a SATA drive.

royhud · Answer

Serial ATA AHCI Software interface providing advanced storage interface for Serial ATA, including native command queuing and native hot plug.

Intel Matrix Storage Technology provides benefits to users of a single drive as well. Storage performance is improved through Native Command Queuing (NCQ), harnessing the quad DMA controllers in the hardware, and optimized hardware & software tuning. To warn of possible hard drive failures, SMART alerting is provided, alerting users when the drive detects potential oncoming failure. For those who wish to later upgrade to RAID capabilities, a system with Intel Matrix Storage Technology pre-installed allows a simplified upgrade to any supported RAID level without having to reinstall the operating system.

In ATA you are running as if just and old Ultra ATA drive.

donroro75 · Answer

now i installed XP pro successfully but the sound card is not working, i went to the dell site and download evey driver for the computer none of them worked. Can some please tell me how to get the sound card to work after installing xp pro over media center

jimconway · Answer

joe53, can you (OR ANYONE ELSE) elaborate on this a little?

I am buying a new Dell desktop XPS computer and trying to decide between XP MCE and XP Pro (I’ll switch to Vista later this year). I will mostly use the new desktop for business applications, but currently have an MCE PC and occasionally like to watch TV on my second monitor using MC. That's about it. I don't have it hooked up to a stereo/home theater, and never will. I occasionally record a TV show, but we have TiVos in other rooms, and much prefer the TiVo experience over other DVR's (including MC).

I would just get MCE, just to have it on those occasions mentioned above, but I understand that there are some things MCE can't do that Pro can. Despite searching the Microsoft website, I can’t find an explanation about the differences between Pro and MCE that I understand.

One of those things that I think Pro may do better than MCE, that I want to do more of, is networking. I would like to hook my laptop (which has XP Pro) and new desktop, when I get it, into my wired network. Right now the network is just the 2 TiVos and my other desktop. Once they are all networked, I want to be able to share files between the desktop and laptop (where I can actually see the file folders on the desktop's hard drives from my laptop and vice versa, etc.).

The question is, can I do this if my new desktop has XP MCE and my laptop has XP Pro? You mentioned that XP Pro allows you to join a domain, while XP MCE does not. Unfortunately, I don't really know what that means. Do I need that ability to simply share files between two computers over my home wired ethernet network?

Any insight on this would be appreciated. I’m ready (and anxious) to pull the trigger on the new machine once I get this worked out.

Windows General

Installing win XP professional over media center

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