How-To Geek

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

does anyone know if there is a special way to reload windows xp on a delldimesion 8300 p4 desk top pc. i have never worked on a computer like this. it has 2 dual 120 gig HD. they work off of 2 little blue ide cables going into a pci card. i have formatted the hard drive through dos, but when the xp disk spin up it will check the config on the computer, then it will ask if you won't to install xp push enter. then it says can't find any hd. any ideas

If it is SATA HD, you need to load the HD drivers during the XP installation. When you boot from the installation CD, you will go into the blue installation screen. At the bottom you will see text saying something like “to load driver during installation hit F6�.

You will need to download the SATA drivers. You can usually find them at the hard drive’s manufacturer website or at the computer’s manufacturer’s (ex. Dell.com) website.

Once downloaded, place them on a floppy and insert it in your computer. Boot of the OS installation CD and hit F6 at the begging of the installation.

If you don’t have a floppy drive you will need to do a process called slip-streaming. Follow these directions:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto.....tallation/

Good luck!

P.S. It might also be that the machine has a RAID controller and you will need to download the drivers for that. Basically the same process.