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XP Clean install/upgrade
I have a question that seems like it would be simple but I couldn't figure it out!
I have a dimension 8400 that we bought for our office with 1 SATA hard drive and 2 cd drives.
It came with XP Home on it.
We need XP Pro to connect to the office domain. We bought a copy of XP Pro.
I put in the XP Pro disk and it asked if I wanted to upgrade - sure.
It rebooted and then when it started the install routine, said it couldn't find a CD drive?!
I thought maybe it needed drivers (F6 on the install) but if I try that it says there's no floppy to install drivers from (there isn't - but you'd think that it might check out the cd drives?)
This same thing happens when I try a clean install from boot, etc.
Is there something proprietary about the 8400 that won't allow an installation?
I have a dimension 8400 that we bought for our office with 1 SATA hard drive and 2 cd drives.
It came with XP Home on it.
We need XP Pro to connect to the office domain. We bought a copy of XP Pro.
I put in the XP Pro disk and it asked if I wanted to upgrade - sure.
It rebooted and then when it started the install routine, said it couldn't find a CD drive?!
I thought maybe it needed drivers (F6 on the install) but if I try that it says there's no floppy to install drivers from (there isn't - but you'd think that it might check out the cd drives?)
This same thing happens when I try a clean install from boot, etc.
Is there something proprietary about the 8400 that won't allow an installation?
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Posted March 14th, 2005 02:00
The issue isn't that it doesn't boot from the CD - it does. It gets through the whole "press any key to boot from CD" then it continues on the blue windows setup screen, loads all it's stuff, then says "no CD drive was detected to continue installation" (it's longer than that but that's the gist of it" and then give f3 to quit as the only option.
This computer is new - it hasn't been used by anybody yet, (it's been booted though and works fine) and clearly the CD drives work (that's what starts the whole install process).297
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Posted March 24th, 2005 20:00
Yes -
I'm sure it says there is no CD ROM drive present. Even though it just booted from CD.
So I restarted the process, and then it says that there is no hard drive present. So I pressed f6 to load other drivers but there is no floppy drive in the system. It won't allow the drivers to be loaded from CD or network.
It's like a loop that is impossible to get out of. Can't install the OS because there it can't detect the HD, can't install drivers for the HD because there is no FD.
Denny Denham
2 Intern
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18798 Posts
297
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Posted March 14th, 2005 01:00
Are the CD-ROM drives identified in the BIOS?. Can you set one of them as the first boot device (see this)?
Message Edited by Denny Denham on 03-13-2005 07:20 PM