'No Hard drive Detected' message when trying to reformat

Question

I am attempting to reformat my new inspiron 1520. I put the XP cd in, set it to boot like i have done countless times. When it finished going through the cd, and asked me to hit enter to continue, i did. right when i did that though it said that it couldn't detect any hard drives. whats going on?

JNNili · Answer

According to a talk with tech support, XP cannot be installed on the system. I'm guessing that there is a setting configured in the bios stopping me from doing it. I assume that if i put a custom bios on there, or tweaked settings within the current one you can find a way to install XP. Anybody try it?

C3PO5 · Answer

Hi The tech that gave you that info is full of bull here are the drivers for XP on your system one or two are missing thou . drivers link http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/driverslist.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&ServiceTag=&SystemID=INS_PNT_PM_1520&os=WW1&osl=EN    Now installing XP is up to you i do not know why it will not install so no help from me on that. Good Luck

JNNili · Answer

He didn't say that the drivers weren't available, just that the OS would not install.

C3PO5 · Answer

Hi Read this to see if it will help. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927520 My mistake on the other part ! See Yea Never mind i thought it was for XP. Message Edited by C3PO5 on 07-29-2007 11:30 PM

lonetreejim · Answer

You need to install XP using the Serial ATA drivers on the Dell website. Download the Intel Matrix Storage Manager - Notebooks, Driver, Windows XP, Windows Vista 32-bit, Windows 2000, English, Multi System, v.7.0.0.1020, A02 (R154200.EXE) and expand them (by running the exe).

Now you need to slip-stream them onto a Windows XP SP2 disk. Look here for the direction you need to go http://www.ozzu.com/ftopic28824.html.

You can try copying the drivers to the root directory of a USB drive and inserting it into a USB port during the CD installation. I read somewhere that this has worked.

If all of this is too complex for you you can go into the BIOS (F2 during bootup) and turn off the AHCI controller setting (and the flash memory setting associated to it) and then any XP SP2 disk will install.

Jim

EDIT: A better thread describing this can be found here.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Install-Windows-XP-On-SATA-Without-a-Floppy-F6-47807.shtml

Message Edited by lonetreejim on 07-30-2007 09:15 PM

Message Edited by lonetreejim on 07-31-2007 07:46 AM

Storage, Drives & Media

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