Dell Dimension 8400 HD/OS install & help

S

scottsims1

New Member
Ok, I will admit it has been over 10 yrs since college, but this one is throwing me for a loop.. I got my son a 8400 Dell for free, it was simply missing the HD. I used my service tag and ordered a sata 300gig HD if pc geeks and Im ready to install. I changed all the boot setting to go to my CD drive first and did the HD scanto show a valid HD (which it did). So I do have a valid XP cert, not pirated mind you. I get to the load section where it asks if I want to install or reinstall, you all know the screen. Since this is a fresh HD, I select the full install and get a quick error msg telling me the system cannot detect a HD is installed.. Any advice??
 
Look in the bios settings for a sata controller setting and change it from ahci/raid to Native IDE/compatibility.
 
If its a older XP CD do like johnb35 said. If the setting is not there, you will need to load the SATA drivers at the F6 prompt. at the first of the install.
 
Look in the bios first to see if you can change the sata controller setting, a lot easier then trying to find the sata driver and load via a floppy drive.
 
Look in the bios and see if the SATA connectors are enabled or not. Typically with Dell, if the connector is not being used, it is disabled, you could be connected to a disabled port.

I have never in th 500 times I have installed XP needed to install a SATA driver
 
so I made it past the format, but on the 1st reboot where I would expect to begin the install, I now get a NTLDR is missing error. I copied over both this file and the ntdetect command.com file from CD but same error. What now??
 
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