Reinstallation can't find my hard drives

[Guest]

i am attempting to reinstall Win XP Pro on a machine with 2 SATA hard drives.
(Win XP has become sluggish & full of holes). I have rebooted from original
XP Pro CD. It inspect system, loads files, starts windows then asks if I want
to do reinstall or repair. Whichever I choose it tells me that setup can't
find any hard drives on my system.
i have changed over the drives (0 to 1 and vice versa on the motherboard),
turned them off and on in the BIOS. No combination has any effect.
when I take out the CD the system boots up just as normal with Win Explorer
showing both drives as ever.
What is happening?
Please help

 

[John John]

You have to tell the setup program to load the SATA drivers at the very
beginning of the setup routine. Pay close attention to the cue at the
bottom of the screen when setups begins, you will see something like:

To specify additional mass storage devices press F6

If you miss the cue you will have to restart the setup routine. To make
sure you don't miss the cue just repeatedly tap the F6 key when setup
begins. A bit later on Setup will ask you to insert a diskette
containing the drivers into drive a:. You MUST supply the drivers on a
diskette, the setup program will not accept the drivers from any other
media source.

John

 

[Guest]

Thanks John,
This will be a problem as my system has no floppy drive (only cd/dvd), nor
do I have the drivers. It is a Dell system and I wonder why they would not
have thought of this problem. Perhaps I should ask Dell?

 

[John John]

Yes, I think you should ask Dell. I don't know what sort of
reinstallation method Dell supplied, either you would have a
reinstallation CD, a Recovery CD or it would make use of a Recovery
Partition on the hard drive. If the pc can boot from USB devices you
might be able to use a USB diskette drive. Or you can borrow or buy a
diskette drive (they only cost about $10-$15) and use it. If you can
get around fitting a diskette to the machine the drivers should be
easily available for download directly from Dell, go over there and
search using you asset tag number and you should find the information
that you need.

John

 

[Guest]

Thanks John, will do.

Yes, I think you should ask Dell. I don't know what sort of
reinstallation method Dell supplied, either you would have a
reinstallation CD, a Recovery CD or it would make use of a Recovery
Partition on the hard drive. If the pc can boot from USB devices you
might be able to use a USB diskette drive. Or you can borrow or buy a
diskette drive (they only cost about $10-$15) and use it. If you can
get around fitting a diskette to the machine the drivers should be
easily available for download directly from Dell, go over there and
search using you asset tag number and you should find the information
that you need.

John

 

[jacintalawhone]

I've got a problem reinstalling WindowsXP Home on my pc too. But it is
a different situation so far. I get nothing at startup when I insert
the cd to reinstall XP.

Dell won't help me because I don't know the seller's address and phone
number when he purchased this system.

So, I'm stuck! Dell should help either way as this is their system.

I think from now on I will go with another pc company..maybe Hewlitt
Packard or something. It seems Dell is a joke.

 

[DL]

As with *any* supplier they only help the registered owner, that they have
listed.