Unable to re-install XP. XP Setup cannot find the hard-disks

Question

My sister's son Dell Dimension series 9100 PC recently got infected with a virus after which XP would not load even in safe mode. I put in the recovery CD provided but when it I tried to either do a repair or a clean install, it said that it could not find a disk drive. I used a emergency boot disk I have with a few utilities on it such as partition managers. I used to PowerQuest Partition magic which found the disk. Also their PTedit program confirmed that the disk was there and said it was bootable. However, it will not boot. I used the Dell utility partition's tests and htey all said the system was ok, as did the Hard-disk diagnosis tool. In the end, I used PowerQuest Partition Manager to delete the partition and then re-add it and activate it. Unfortunately, I still cannot re-install XP as it cannot find the hard-disk. Both PowerQuest software can see the disk as can Acronis DiskEditor, but nothing else can. I am at my wits end as nothing will make XP recognize that there is even a hard-drive in the PC. I have deleted and re-added the partition and formatted  in NTFS, then FAT32, then inNTFS again. Nothing works, I may even have inadvertently made it worse (though I cannot see how the situation could be worse). When I leave it to boot (knowing there is no OS there), I get as far as the screen where ww.dell.com is at the top. It then says 'Loading PBR for descriptor 2...done', then there is half a page of random characters before it stops. I assume that it is looking in the wrong place for the non-existent OS. I purposely left the Utility Partition alone, just in case. Is there any way to fix the boot record / parttion table, or start from scratch, as there is no data on the PC anymore? I am very experienced PC user and a programmer by trade, however I do not know a great deal about this area. Up until now I have not had a problem here but now I am obviously out of my depth.   Any help would be much appreciated as the PC is less than a year old and of a high spec (250gb hard-drive) and I have got the stage where I am running round in circles, retrying things again.   Many thanks, Chris

dave51_2fe887 · Answer

Chris, This may help. http://www.djdenham.com/8400%20Special.htm

Chris Wilkinson · Answer

Thanks for that. making the change in BIOS allows me to install Win2000 but not WinXP. Now, just after the XP drivers have loaded and the bottom of the screen says XP is starting, the screen turns blue and tells me there is a problem with pci.sys at some memory location. The resource CD does not seem to have the RAID driver on it and the download at Intel is for installing on an already-working XP box. I cannot see how to create a floppy disk.

Chris

dave51_2fe887 · Answer

How about here. http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scripts-df-external/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProductID=961&DwnldID=9727&strOSs=45&OSFullName=Windows*%20XP%20Home%20Edition&lang=eng

shesagordie · Answer

Chris Wilkinson

See if the following can help,

http://www.vr6.com/misc/Dell_9100_Installation.htm

How to prepare a floppy with the SATA controller drivers and you will need an internal floppy drive, not an USB drive.

http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/format.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&SystemID=DIM_P4_9100&os=WW1&osl=en&deviceid=8615&typecnt=2&releaseid=R99740&vercnt=1

Bev.

thedarkestshado · Answer

Hi everybody,   I found that using a slipstreamed copy of Windows XP cured my pci.sys problems, http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sp2_slipstream.asp is a DIY guide on how to make a slipstreamed cd.   When you are installing Windows using this slipstreamed disk you are NOT required to press F6 at the beginning of setup as the CD already contains the appropriate drivers.   Good Luck!

Windows General

Was this post helpful?