Another reinstallation question

Question

My sis has a Dell Dimension 8300 with Windows XP home edition.  For a few months it has been taking over 30 minutes to boot up.  Last week she told me she has been turning it off for years at the power strip, rather than shutting it down properly.  Now it will not boot up and says it must shut down.  I research the forums and followed the directions to boot from the CD.  It got all the way past the license agreement but then after a few minutes working properly and loaded things it said it could not find the Windows folder.  I tried it again and then it told me it could not find the drive.  I ran the diagnostics and it said it could not locate the drive.  I tried again and it went until the choices of where to place the OS.  There were 3 choices (one of them being FAT) and I picked the middle one because it had the most space.  In researching the forums I found no mention of there being a choice.  Again it said it could not locate the Windows file or folder.  I will try reseating things tomorrow but wondered if perhaps I am doing something wrong (since I am a novice at this).  Since this computer is rather old, I wonder about the wisdom of replacing the hard drive.  Thanks in advance.

fireberd · Answer

If you are not doing a complete reinstall including reformatting the hard drive that could be the problem. With the potential problems it has the hard drive reformat is required. However only the "primary" NTFS formatted partion, not the "FAT" partition which is the Dell diagnostic partition.

See THIS on doing a "clean" install.

Keep in mind, the correct install sequence is (1) Install Windows (2) Install Intel Chipset Drivers (3) install device drivers including sound, video, etc. DO NOT skip the chipset drivers or you will not be able to install the sound drivers and several other devices will not work either.

HERE is the Dell driver downloads in case you are missing any.

nancyspeed · Answer

I reseated the hard drive. On this next attempt, it went on to reformatting the hard drive. It reformatted 20% and then quit. Then it says there is not enough space to install Windows. It said the partition was too small and I needed at least 1023 MB. Here is what the partitions say:

Partition 1 (FAT) 31 MB (24MB free)

C: Partition 2 (unknown) 76254 MB (76253 MB free)

unpartitioned space: 8 MB

The hard drive must be just gone?

fireberd · Answer

The C partition is what you use, however it has to be formatted (which deletes all the data on it and frees up all the space on that partition so it can be used).

As the link I referenced noted, you must select the option to format the hard drive before installing Windows. If there is an option for a "full" format (rather than a quick format) select the full format option. It will take a little time but what needs to be done.

nancyspeed · Answer

On the last 4 attempts it said there was no drive there.   Most likely I will replace the hard drive but may have trouble finding one for an 8300.  I see Dell doesn't offer anything but external devices for old machines.

fireberd · Answer

If it is the drive, that is a standard PATA (IDE) interface drive. You can get one wherever, you don't have to buy another one from Dell. When you install it, set the Device Type jumper on the rear of the drive to "Cable Select" (do not use Master or Slave).

nancyspeed · Answer

I bought a new drive today from Best Buy. The one that was on the Dell was 80 Gbytes. The new one is 320 Gbytes and is the smallest one they had. The guy insisted it would do fine. But I remember reading somewhere about old computers not being able to handle this size hard drive. And surprise--the formatting is almost complete on the new hard drive and I found in the box a CD the directions said to use--Data Lifeguard Tools which supposedly has what I am supposed to use rather than the operating system CD that came with the computer.

What does this mean? "follow the instructions to set up your larger than 137 GB hard drive without a controller card."

Will this all be taken care of automatically? How do I update the BIOS?

Thanks to all of you for helping. I guess I should have looked in the box before I started.

nancyspeed · Answer

Is the chipset driver on the Drivers and Utilities CD or do I have to get that from the website?  I remember I have to do that first.

nancyspeed · Answer

Maybe I have found answers to my questions by default. The installation went text book perfect. The computer boots up perfectly. I will wait to install drivers until I hear from someone here. I still need to know if the chipset driver is on the Dell installation CD that came with the computer. Also, the BIOS is AO2 or AOS2. I know it said "2". Do I need to update it if everything seems to be working just fine?

YIPPEE what a great feeling to have tried this and it looks as if it will work.

Windows General

Another reinstallation question

Was this post helpful?