Problem reinstalling Windows XP on Dell Optiplex GX620 SFF

Question

I'm attempting to install Windows XP using the recovery disk on my Optiplex GX620 SFF. The hard drive has been replaced, so it's not the original hard drive.

When I attempt to install Windows, it loads the drivers, comes to the blue screen with the message "Setup is starting windows" and just sits there. No HDD activity, and no CDRom activity. I have tried to install with the SATA Operation set to both Normal and Combination, and it doesn't seem to get further either way.

If during the install, I hit F6 to specify a driver, a message will appear stating that Windows doesn't have the proper driver for the Mass Storage Device (SATA Hard Drive), but it will only accept a driver off of a floppy drive and I don't have any floppy drives with additional drivers on them (in fact, there is not a disk with additional drivers, only additional programs). These are a new set of recovery disks that Dell just sent me for the unit. Is it possible that they are for a different unit and therefore don't contain the necessary driver? Looking at the support site for my computer, there is no SATA controller driver available. There is an Intel chipset driver, but it is an exe file, and not an inf.

I was able to successfully install Ubuntu on the computer, so I'm confident that the hard drive is ok.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

dave

Tom Green · Answer

Hello Dave I would try to view and check the boot.ini file to make sure it is pointed to the correct partition. Sounds like it can't see the files to load windows. Hope this helps. Tom

djgoldstein · Answer

Tom,

Thanks for the post. Exactly which boot.ini file should I look at? This is all prior to windows actually installing itself on the hard drive (in fact, if you reboot the computer, it will boot into Ubuntu as if nothing had happened).

Thanks,

dave

Tom Green · Answer

Hello Dave

I understood wrong, I thought it had installed and was trying to boot.

My mistake. Sounds like a problem with the boot loader for duel boot.

I'm not much help with that, I'll let someone else answer that. Sorry

Tom

theflash1932 · Answer

Dell OEM reinstall disks do not have any additional drivers in them ... they are simply rebranded, OEM disks. You have to download and extract the driver files onto a floppy. Alternatively, you can use nLiteOS.com to integrate the driver into your installation media. You MUST also configure and initialize RAID BEFORE attempting to install.

What RAID controller do you have in this system?

djgoldstein · Answer

There is no RAID controller, only a single SATA drive using the onboard (Intel) controller. The chipset drivers for the Optiplex come as a self-extracting EXE, once extracted there are quite a few files, but no INFs. Any idea where I can find the actual driver files to slipstream onto a CD?

Thanks,

dave

theflash1932 · Answer

There are probably two options:

1. Boot to BIOS Setup (F2) and change SATA controller to ATA/Compatibility Mode, or

2. (Recommended) use this driver from Intel (for some reason Dell doesn't have F6-format drivers for all systems):
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=18860&lang=eng

Windows General

Problem reinstalling Windows XP on Dell Optiplex GX620 SFF

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