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April 29th, 2008 06:00
Creating the Utility Partition
The hard drive in my Inspiron 5160 crashed and I replaced it with another drive. The only disk I have is the xp home recovery disk. I must have lost the other disks. I know that dell computers usually have a utility partition, but I do not know how to create it on a new drive. I have looked in the downloads, faq and the knowledge base, but I have not found any program or article on how to create it. Can someone point me in the right direction.
I went a head and followed these instructions Install Drivers in This Order in Windows (I know that I might have to reinstall xp to create the utility partition) and ran into an error installing the chipset drivers. I first ran the Intel chipset driver (which was optional) and then I tried installing the Microsoft chipset driver (which was urgent), but I got an error saying "This computer does not support this operating system" Should only one of these drivers be installed?
Thanks for any help
jackshack
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April 29th, 2008 14:00
The Inspiron 5160 shipped with a hard drive divided into three partitions; a FAT formatted partition of about 60 MB that contained the diagnostics (accessed by using the F12 one time boot menu), an NTFS formatted partition that Windows XP was loaded into (the C drive), and the Dell Restore Partition that allowed you to reinstall the original image of the C drive. If the drive has failed you no longer have access to the restore partition. You might be able to recreate the utility partition with some work, but I haven't bothered to do this since the Dell Resource Disk has the utilities and diagnostics. If you have lost your disks, you should still be able to get replacements if you live in the US by using the form found here. If you live outside the US you will need to contact Dell support for your region and request the disks.
The document you found describes the proper order for reinstallation of Windows. Install the OS, install the Notebook System Software, install the Intel chipset driver, install the video, install the onboard network adapter, install the sound driver, followed by anything else in the order you choose. The Microsoft driver labeled urgent is only for Windows XP with Service Pack 1. Any 5160 ordered after September, 2004, was shipped with a Windows XP with Service Pack 2 CD. The Microsoft driver is not needed, and as you discovered, will not work with Windows XP Service Pack 2.
Edit: There were two video cards shipped with the 5160 and you will need to determine which before attempting to load the video driver.