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Windows Setup still can't find SATA hard drive - drivers installed
The XP Home installation on my Dimension 9150 is completely shot. I haven't got any Recovery CD's so I'm trying to upgrade to XP Pro to fix the problem.
I've downloaded the SATA driver (R130118.exe) from the Dell website and extracted onto floppy. When I boot off the XP Pro CD I install the additional driver from the floppy but when I try to run Recovery Console or XP install it still says it can't detect any hard drives.
The SATA operation in the BIOS is the default setting of "RAID Autodetect / AHCI"
My other options are "RAID Autodetect / ATA", "RAID On" and "SATA/PATA Combination"
I know that if I select "Combination" then Setup recognises the drives without additional drivers (I've gotten into Recovery Console this way to run CHKDSK) but then Windows XP says the drive is not bootable (until I select "RAID Autodetect / AHCI" again)
Are there any other drivers I would need to load?
Can I install/upgrade by selecting "Combination" then change the SATA operation back to AHCI?
Should Windows boot with Combination selected if that's what was used to install XP Pro?
I've thought about buying a new HDD to do a fresh install as they're only £20-30 but won't I have the same problem of hard drive not installed?
Any suggestions are appreciated.
Thanks
boroboy41
speedstep
9 Legend
9 Legend
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47K Posts
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December 22nd, 2010 10:00
Set the Drive to Combination Mode or ATA mode.
Do not try AHCI mode as this will crash with
"STOP 0x0000007B" error message when you restart your Windows XP ...
RoHe
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44.3K Posts
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December 22nd, 2010 11:00
I'm not sure XP will recognize Combination mode, but it certainlly will recognize Raid Autodetect/ATA so use that to install XP.
Keep in mind that if you install the SATA drivers from the floppy disk when prompted during the XP installation, you'll have to change BIOS back to RAID/AHCI after you complete the installation. Otherwise it won't boot and you'll get that 7B error message.
After you install XP, you'll need to install all the hardware drivers, in the correct order! XP followed by:
Desktop System Software (System Utilities)
Chipset driver
Video driver
Audio driver
Network driver
Modem driver
etc.
You'll need to know what hardware (eg video card, audio card, etc) you have in order to pick the right drivers. If you use the Service Tag number at support.dell.com, it should (not always) give you a list of the specific drivers you'll need to install for this system.
Ron