newb - XP install disk says there are no hard drives

[djneill]

Hi,

Background:
I am a newb.

I have a pretty good Dell machine (3 GHz, 1 GB RAM) that I just don't
use much, and I had used a Ubuntu live disk to make a dual-boot. Now,
I am selling it to a friend and I was going to try to format it.
Well, I decided to try to boot from the XP CD and after getting to the
3-way: install, recovery console, exit, I went ahead and tried
recover but it says there are no hard drives detected. Same if I try
to just install XP. But in the BIOS, the hard drive is there. And it
works fine booting to either XP or Ubuntu still.

I googled and found that the SATA HDD drivers might need to be
obtained on a floppy, and have it ready when it prompts to press <F6>
early in the boot to the XP CD.

Is this what I need?

Also, this computer does not have an internal floppy drive. Will it
treat an external USB floppy drive as a floppy after <F6>?

For any help, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks,
Dan

 

[Rich Barry]

If you are using Grub as your bootloader you have to clear the MBR. I
use a Win98SE bootdisk with fdisk and format on it. If your Bios sees the
External Floppy Drive then at the A:\ type fdisk /mbr You can get one
at www.bootdisk.com From a Linux Terminal the command is
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdx bs=512 count=1 Just replace the x with
whatever the actual letter is. You may have to Do it from root
using a LiveCd. But you could try it from within Ubuntu. Also, using
GParted you can delete the Linux Partition and the Windows Partition. You
can recreate them
using the WinXP Cd. Once you get the Cd to recognize the drive then you
will probably need a floppy with the SATA
Drivers on it.

 

[John John]

Hi,

Background:
I am a newb.

I have a pretty good Dell machine (3 GHz, 1 GB RAM) that I just don't
use much, and I had used a Ubuntu live disk to make a dual-boot. Now,
I am selling it to a friend and I was going to try to format it.
Well, I decided to try to boot from the XP CD and after getting to the
3-way: install, recovery console, exit, I went ahead and tried
recover but it says there are no hard drives detected. Same if I try
to just install XP. But in the BIOS, the hard drive is there. And it
works fine booting to either XP or Ubuntu still.

I googled and found that the SATA HDD drivers might need to be
obtained on a floppy, and have it ready when it prompts to press <F6>
early in the boot to the XP CD.

Is this what I need?

Also, this computer does not have an internal floppy drive. Will it
treat an external USB floppy drive as a floppy after <F6>?

For any help, I would greatly appreciate it.

Most likely the F6 driver issue is the cause of the problem. You can
either fit a diskette drive to the computer, even if only temporarilly
or you can use a USB floppy but not all USB drives are compatible with
the F6 process:

A connected USB floppy disk drive does not work when you press F6 to
install mass storage drivers during the Windows XP installation process
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/916196

John