Help, No drives found ??

[LA_MERC_YellowDog]

OK, Im working with a Dell.. I know thats the first problem...

BUT

The hard drive crashed, now I have a new West/Dig. 160 gig SATA drive.
When I try to boot from the CD so I can load the OS, all i get is not bootable drives found.
In the BIOS it is seeing both CD rom drives, as well at the new harddrive.

BTW this computer dose not have an onboard 3.5 floppy drive.

Dose anyone have any suggestions as how I can get the new OS loaded on the P.O.S dell.

[LA_MERC_M@lACHi]

You may need to see if you need the SATA drivers for windows to be able to use the drive. Go to Dell's website and locate the SATA drivers. If you have a USB thumb drive, some of the newer Dell's allow access to it as if it were a floppy disk. You will need to check the bios for that. When you start the boot from cd process, the first screen will prompt to hit F6 to load drivers for SCSI and other boot devices.

Do you have the restore cd for that dell pc? That is alot easier because it creates a special partition to load all the drivers for the windows install to use.

[LA_MERC_Dirge]

Make sure that the SATA devices are ebabled in your BIOS. I flashed my BIOS yesterday and it reset with this option disabled, causing a similar problem.

Is the system booting from the CD? If not, you need to re-arrange the boot sequence.

Just throwing some stuff out there.

[LA_MERC_YellowDog]

OK,

Before I start ... I have updated the BIOS through the dos prompt using a boot to dos 3.5 floppy disk. ( there was an updated bios on dells website) Dell dimention 4700


The big problem im having is I cant get it to boot from the CD. "Dell Supplied copy of the OS" Xp home.

I have re-arranged the boot sequence to the CD roms first then 3.5 floopy then hard drive.

I went to MS support and downloaded the EXE to create the 6 setup disks needed to boot up "setup" on floppy drives. (the setup was for xp home not pro)

This was successful, I have now created 2 partions on the 160 GB hard drive C and D. everythings was going good to this point, when setup tries to to install XP home I get the Error:


the following VALUE IN THE .SIF FILE USED BY SETUP IS CORRUPTED OR

MISSING:

VALUE 0 ON THE LINE IN SECTION [SOURCEDISKSFILES] WITH KEY "SP2.CAB."

SETUP CANNOT CONTINUE. TO QUIT SETUP, PRESS F3

and this is as far as I have made it. :(

[LA_MERC_Dirge]

maybe you downloaded the dos disks for XP service pack 2 and you are using a CD that can't use that? Are there different versions you can download for the diskette way?

[LA_MERC_T4rg3T]

Yellow, Dell has built in utilities that help with installations. Did you contact Dell with help on reinstalling your operating system on your newly replaced drive?


You can also look here for help http://www.bootdisk.com/

[LA_MERC_YellowDog]

maybe you downloaded the dos disks for XP service pack 2 and you are using a CD that can't use that? Are there different versions you can download for the diskette way?


Ok you fellas were headed in the right direction.. Heres what I found out.

The Dell I have will not boot from CD... “Cheep piece of crap"

I had a combination of problems that were misleading me as to the root of my problem.

First I downloaded the boot from disks utility for MS support. But it would not run due to a batch of bad 3.5 floppy disks.

The error I was getting was a service pack 2 error caused by the fact that the Utility I was using was for XP home,
there’s another one for XP home with SP2. D/Led that utility and used it... It finally installed.

Anyway, I have learned another hard lesson....

1. Never buy a Dell, if it would have booted from the CD to start with I would not have gone through so much crap

2. Pay more attention to the D/L page on MS supports site...What I needed was 2 links down.

[SnAkEbItE]

Well let me put on the fire resistant underroo's here but, we here where I work use nothing but Dell's and they will boot from CD, now the version you bought may not have, but for what reason Dell would have done that I would not know because that's a standard bios option.

[LA_MERC_YellowDog]

Well, no flaming to do here, but I would have thought the same thing.

I realy think the root of the problem is, the dell they bought was one of those " GREAT" combo deals for like 599 or somthing.

I belive they got the bottom of the barrel hardware in this machine. Thus the cheap price.

" No matter how many ways I tried in the Bios to get it to boot from the CD, it would not"

Im sure other higher quality Dells will, but not this one.

[LA_MERC_th33_r00k]

Easy as that, Easy as Dell!