Have you formatted the drive?  (backup data 1st).

 

I would suggest using the debug program and the clean1k program to wipe the hard drive.   List you're hardware too.

What's the clean1K program?

 

Last time I did an XP Professional install it gave me the option to format the drives as part of the install.  Are you suggesting I make a DOS Boot disk and format the drives prior to attempting the reinstall? 

 

- jim

You want to "wipe" the HDD's before any install.  Then Windows install will format.

 

If you don't have the clean1k program ,maybe do a google or dell.com search for it.  It removes the last 1k of data out of memory.  I still do it but you may not need it with windows xp.  It was primarily for Win98.  I still have an old Win98 dell restore CD.  I don;t think the XP restore cd's have it.

 

It would be under d:\hddutil\clean

 

But definietely do the debug program.  Just get to a dos prompt you don't need the CD to run debug.

 

debug

-F 200 L1000 0

-A CS:100

xxxx:0100 MOV AX,301

xxxx:0103 MOV BX,200

xxxx:0106 MOV CX,1

xxxx:0109 MOV DX,80 (80 is primary drive or 81 for the secondary)

xxxx:010C: INT13

xxxx:010E: INT 20

xxxx:0110 (Leave this line blank) to continue

-G

The message "Program terminated normally" appears

 

Reboot

 

Reboot again with CD in drive

 

 

 

Good Luck!

 

To complete this thread - the formatting of the HDD turned out not to be the issue. Found a article at www.theeldergeek.com/clean_installation_of_windows_xp.htm  about XP doing a BIOS check and if it gets it wrong you can have problems. Ended up needing to press F5 at start of install, and it then asked me to select the appropriate HAL - it was using 486, should have been ACPI Multiprocessor PC for my XPS 400.