This post is more than 5 years old
72 Posts
0
86341
January 17th, 2013 11:00
Optiplex 330 - Install XP - BSOD
Due to numerous viruses and general slowness - I started to restore the operating system to a Optiplex 330 (Windows XP). When it finshes loading the drivers and states "starting windows" it crashes with a BSOD (again, this is during the re-install of Windows).
However if I let it boot it will boot back to Windows XP just fine. But doing any work is slowww. I used a util to reformat the hard drive and test for errors. No errors and a good 160Gb SATA hdd. Dell long diagnostics report no errors. ScanDisk was only a couple of bad files.
I put the hdd into another computer as the master and it loaded Windows! When I took the hdd and put it back into the one I'm having problems with it won't even go into Safe mode without rebooting.
Is there away to load Windows from the other machine "bare bones" so I can load the correct drivers later?
Other suggestions?
Note: the BIOS has a password that nobody remembers. Would this prevent a re-load of the O/S?
Thanks.
RoHe
12 Elder
•
45.2K Posts
•
172.6K Points
1
January 17th, 2013 13:00
In order to install XP on a SATA hard drive you need to change SATA Operation in BIOS setup to RAID Autodetect/ATA first. Otherwise you'll get the infamous STOP 7b BSOD. In order to make that change you'll need the BIOS password or you'll have to use the jumper to clear the password (page 91) if it's lost.
And you have to install the SATA drivers from a internal floppy disk* at the beginning of the XP reinstall by pressing F6 when requested. Otherwise you can't install the SATA drivers. The system will work ok without SATA drivers but you won't have the advantages of the Intel Matrix Storage Manager. I doubt the user will notice any performance differences.
Assuming you install the SATA drivers during the XP install, you'll have to go back into BIOS setup and change SATA Operation back to RAID/AHCI during the very first reboot of the OS.
*Some systems will allow the SATA driver to be installed from a USB key or an external USB floppy drive.
RoHe
12 Elder
•
45.2K Posts
•
172.6K Points
0
January 17th, 2013 13:00
One more thing...
Assuming your attempts to reinstall haven't damaged the MBR, and assuming this system has Dell's PC Restore on the hard drive, PC Restore would be the easiest way to reset everything to the "factory" state.
Reboot and press / HOLD Ctrl as soon as you see the Dell Splash screen. Then quickly press F11 and release both keys at the same time. Follow the prompts to run PC Restore.
Keep in mind that everything will be lost when you run PC Restore (or a clean install) so you must back up data on external media (network drive, etc) before you start.
If you do a clean install, you'll need to install all the right hardware drivers in the correct order after XP is installed:
(PC Restore will automatically install the right drivers, but they may not be the latest versions which you can update at that link after XP is running again.)
And regardless of whether you do a cliean install or run PC Restore, you'll still have to install the latest XP Service Pack (SP3) plus all the other Microsoft updates and hotfixes for everything else after loading the drivers.
rdunnill
8 Professor
•
8.8K Posts
•
35.3K Points
0
January 17th, 2013 13:00
Considering that the hard drive boots a different machine without issue, I wonder if you have a hardware problem? For example, a flaky power supply will cause such problems.