Need to do a fresh install of XP

Hi Knotjohn and welcome to the Dell forums

First and for most you need to edit your post to remove your service tag as this is a violation of the Terms of service and will get this thread deleted untill you do so.

Now to your problem. If you are using a Dell restore disk that came with the system you should not need to load the SATA drivers. But be that as it may here are some thing for you to try.

IF you are not using a RAID setup boot into the bios and make sure that the SATA settings are set to ATA mode vice ACHI mode. I do not see that option but check anyways.

Now if you do need the SATA drivers you will need THIS ONE  for the floppy disk. What you do is run the file to extract the files. Then you copy those files to the Root directory of the floppy disk. Also make sure that when you are in the bios the setting for the floppy drive is set correctly.

So what you will do it put the OS disk in the drive, boot the system making sure the CD drive is the first boot device then put the floppy disk into the driver at the F6 option.

Davet50,

I have done as you asked for the tag. Sorry for the mistake...I aggree that I should not need the additional driver but in all I have read, these drivers were not included on the disk I received from Dell. The machine is from '06 and I don't know if that matters.

I am not using a Raid setup as I do have a second drive, but it is for storage of music files only. I keep it that way to keep it safe. I have had a HD crash before. I went into the BIOS and see nowhere on the machine to change anything but that the drive is on, off or in Raid mode. It does not give me any other setup choices that I can see.

I will try the driver you sent. I will put it on my working system. open it and copy to the FD. I belive that my floppy is set up correctly as it did try to use the other driver that I had found. I will make the attempt and report back....Thank you!

davet50,

I can't thank you enough! It worked and I am sitting with a fresh install! Was the driver one of the ones that was shown on my system information and I just didn't realize it? I was looking for a Samsung driver but I should have looked for something else?

Never the less, now if my backup will restore my files I am the happiest guy in the world. I would appreciate the answer to the above question and thanks again!

knotjohn

Glad to hear you over that hurdle

The driver your were look at for the Samsung is not really a driver at all. It is a firmware update, which I must warn you use with caution as if anything goes wrong with a firmware update you have essentially what is know as a brick. So unless you are experiencing a specific issue that the firmware address, most of the time you are better off not doing it.

No drives hard drives or optical have drivers. All the necessary drivers for them are built into the OS by the vendors via Microsoft. If you right click on any of your drives in device manager and select properties and look on the drivers tab you will see that the driver is provided by Microsoft.

Now there are two other actual drivers that do have something to do with the drives. Those are the chipset and the SATA drivers. These two drivers setup all the system hardware and the os to be able to communicate with each other. 

So when dealing with SATA drive always look for the SATA drivers listing on the Dell drivers and download page.

Now let me also point out that there is also a proper way to reload drivers after a reinstall especially with XP you can find that info on THIS LINK

I would suggest you go into device manager and look to see if all the devices are ok and have no errors by them

Davet50,

I do not have an internet connection but the NIC does not show an issue in device Manager any ideas?