This is what happens when I try to reinstall winxp on another used computer (dell 8400 with a SATA drive)

The windows setup screen appears and loads files.

The next screen says welcome to setup and offers three options .
1-to setup XP press enter. 2 To repair XP press R 3 to exit without installing XP press F3
I press enter and the following message comes up.

Setup did not find any hard disk installed in your computer. Make sure any hard disk drives are powered on and properly connected. And any disk related configuration is connect. ect. press F3 to quit. It does this if I try repair also.

The drive works since I can boot the PC without the CD. It has the command.com on the C:
I checked the connections to the HD and Motherboard.

Any help would be welcome

Hello,

Windows XP does not know how to interact with your SATA hard drive, and/or controller.

When you first start booting the XP CD-ROM, you will see a little message splash along the bottom of the screen... press F6 to for driver diskette... or something along those lines.

You will need to track down the particular driver for the SATA interface. I would look on Dell's Website for instructions. Go to their support page, and enter in your service tag number, and you should be presented with a number of options.

This is the same problem that caused problems with Windows 2K and SCSI interfaces.

Christian

What is the option if I do not have a floppy drive?

I am in the same situation. And do not have a floppy drive on this laptop. Would appreciate any direction as to how to install the SATI driver when using the XP CD as the boot/install device.
Thanks.

You must use floppy drive to load f6 drivers. PCMCIA Floppy, USB external floppy, on-board floppy.. it doesn't matter as long as it is floppy drive (Thank you, microsoft, for making modern computers useless without obsolete piece of hardware such as floppy drive. Ever heard of CDs?)

After further hunting - i found this article which explains another option for those of us without floppy drives, thus unable to use F6

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Insta...F6-47807.shtml

note : you can use cdrs or flash keys with Vista

Actually what started this hunt yesterday, is the request of a friend to strip off Vista and install XPPro. He hates it, won't use the functionality - he's an email, documents, webbrowser user only. So i am downgrading from Vista to XP. Wish me luck!

I wish you a floppy drive.

lol u may actually have to buy one