Reformat issues with XPS Gen 4

Question

Hi, I currently have a Dell XPS Gen 4. It has a P4 @ 3.4GHZ with a Nvidia 6800 and 1gb of ddr2. My brother gave me the computer after he went to college and it is riddled with virus's and trojans. The current operating system on it and Windows XP Home Edition with SP3. I have a Windows XP Home Edition with SP3 disk. What I want to do is do a total reformat of the whole HDD. I put in the disk and changed the BIOS boot menu to boot from CD-ROM first. Then I restarted and it prompted to press any key to boot from CD. I did so and it started the set up, then mid way through it says that my HDD is not connected and I have to cancel the installation. The HDD is connected and I can access the current XP install with all the same files and such. So I tired it again and same thing. I check all connections and still nothing. So I put the disk in and went to My Computer and right clicked on the DVD drive, went to explore and clicked the set up from there. I did a fresh install and it started, then after about 4 or 5 minutes, the computer just BSOD's and installion is corrupted. When I start up now, I can choose 2 partitions, the regular one that has been on the computer or the corrupted one. I have a high tech level and have no clue how I am going to get a fresh copy installed. I have had a couple people tell me that I should do a boot from a floppy drive or something and that the SATA HDD drivers arent there or something but I have no clue. Any future help is greatly apprecicated.

Thank you

Davet50 · Answer

correct if you are not using a Dell disk then you will need to load the SATA drivers either with a floppy disk or by slipstreaming them into the install disk. Download THIS file.<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed / replaced from this post by Dell>Click on the installtion instructions for some further info. Run the file to extract it. place the extracted files onto the root directroy (A:) of the disk start the install and when the prompt press F6 to load drivers put the disk in the drive and press F6 .

Check in your bios first to find out if your SATA operation is set to ATA or AHCI to chose the correct driver.

dclark15 · Answer

I am not using a Dell disk that is correct. I downloaded the file then put in the floppy and double clicked the file and it installed a image on the floppy disk. At first it didn't work and I tried doing the RAID set up and it still did not work. In BIO's it is set to RAID/AHCI. I guess I should try to slip stream them? No Clue how to do that..

Edit: Earlier I said I had a Home Edition disk. Correction, I am using a XP PRO SP3 64bit edition, might the 64 bit be affecting whats going on? When I try to do the floppy thing, it says that the file has caused a error or something along those lines.

Thanks for the current help, much appreciated!

Davet50 · Answer

Try changing the SATA in the bios to Raid/ATA. Then try it with out the floppy and with the floppy.

dclark15 · Answer

Okay, So its installed and everything. My last question is, all of the drivers on the Dell support page for the XPS Gen 4 seem to be ( or atleast I persume) 32bit. I installed a 64bit XP PRO OS on it, so I am wondering if anyone know's where I can get the 64 bit drivers for the computer.

Thanks

dclark15 · Answer

Nope, I get this error with the floppy ( same as I was getting before I switched to RAID/ATA)

"File iaStor.sys caused an unexpected error(4109) at line 2113 in d:\xpsp\base\boot\setup\oemdisk.c."

Thanks for the help

Edit: I resumed installion, popped out the floppy, restarted and now it works..so hopefully its golden now. I'll keep you updated, thanks for all the help Dave

Davet50 · Answer

Open up device manager and look for any with a ! or X next to them. Those are the ones you will need. Generally the 32 bit drivers don't work but some do. Most likely you will need to vist the hardware vendors web site to look for 64 bit drivers.

Also follow THESE STEPS to reload the drivers

dclark15 · Answer

Sucess!  All drivers are installed and computer is like new again!  Thanks so much for your help Davet50!  Greatly appreciated.  Thank you

Davet50 · Answer

You are welcome. Gladto have helped. Happy Computing

Windows General

Reformat issues with XPS Gen 4

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