XP PRO Crashes on Setup - doesn't see hard drive (downgrade from V

[dd]

I got a new Dell with Vista 64 installed and must downgrade to XP because of
legacy apps that won't work under Vista.

Setup blue screens after the screen for selecting drive - which shows 4
options but no recognizable drive letter.

Under Dell's installation, there is a small FAT16 utility partition marked
primary, followed by a small NTFS partition for Recovery, also marked
primary. There there is C: with an extended partition and 3 logical drives
(C-E). (All NTFS).

I'm not sure if the problem is that the XP setup simply doesn't recognize
the hard drive of the problem is with those two very small partitions located
prior to C:.

The drive is a standard WD 300GB.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I got a new Dell with Vista 64 installed and must downgrade to XP
because of legacy apps that won't work under Vista.

Setup blue screens after the screen for selecting drive - which
shows 4 options but no recognizable drive letter.

Under Dell's installation, there is a small FAT16 utility partition
marked primary, followed by a small NTFS partition for Recovery,
also marked primary. There there is C: with an extended partition
and 3 logical drives (C-E). (All NTFS).

I'm not sure if the problem is that the XP setup simply doesn't
recognize the hard drive of the problem is with those two very
small partitions located prior to C:.

The drive is a standard WD 300GB.

Why didn't you order it with the Downgrade option?
Does Dell support the system you bought with XP installed?

If Dell does support that model with XP - your best bet will be to wipe all
the partitions and create a new one for XP.

Truly - what I would do is keep Vista and run a virtual machine (Windows XP
installed on it) for whatever applications you think will not run under
Vista directly (unless they have some hardware component preventing such
things?)

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I got a new Dell with Vista 64 installed and must downgrade to XP
because of legacy apps that won't work under Vista.

Setup blue screens after the screen for selecting drive - which
shows 4 options but no recognizable drive letter.

Under Dell's installation, there is a small FAT16 utility partition
marked primary, followed by a small NTFS partition for Recovery,
also marked primary. There there is C: with an extended partition
and 3 logical drives (C-E). (All NTFS).

I'm not sure if the problem is that the XP setup simply doesn't
recognize the hard drive of the problem is with those two very
small partitions located prior to C:.

The drive is a standard WD 300GB.

Why didn't you order it with the Downgrade option?
Does Dell support the system you bought with XP installed?

If Dell does support that model with XP - your best bet will be to
wipe all the partitions and create a new one for XP.

Truly - what I would do is keep Vista and run a virtual machine
(Windows XP installed on it) for whatever applications you think
will not run under Vista directly (unless they have some hardware
component preventing such things?)

However - you might just need the drivers for the controller. (Although -
being as it is doubtful you have a floppy diskette drive in this machine -
you'll need to integrate them into the Windows XP CD or use a USB floppy
drive.)

Looking at one of your multi-posted items - I see it is a XPS 730x
desktop...

Likely this:
http://support.dell.com/support/dow...1&impid=-1&formatcnt=1&libid=41&fileid=281168

By the way - where'd you get the Windows XP installation CD/key you are
using to install XP onto the new machine?

 

[sidem]

Hi dude, could you help me to install windows xp sp3? after load by cd it
appear some error with the blue screen below:
A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to
prevent damage to your computer.

If this is the first time you've seen this Stop error screen,
restart your computer. If this screen appears agin, follow
these steps:

Check for viruses on your computer. Remove any newly installed
hard drives or hard drive controllers. Check your hard drive
to make sure it is properly configured and terminated.
Run CHKDSK /F to check for hard drive corruption and then
restart your computer.

Technical information:

*** STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF78D2524, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

**note: i have done the chkdsk /f and scan all virus already. I have test to
change sata in bious RAID AUTO/AHCI to RAID AUTO/ATA but i can't find that
text in bios screen. Hope you all can help me and explain step by step.
Big thank

 

[David B.]

Start your own thread rather than hijacking someone else's. And search
first, there are many discussions on SP3 issues.

 

[dd]

Dell didn't offer a downgrade option for this model of the XPS - although it
was offered for a lower-end model, which would probably have made my life
easier but the lower end model (same XPS, just cheaper) didn't have the hard
drive I wanted.

And I had bought a new, retail copy of XP before it was discontinued because
I knew I would want it on my next computer. It didn't occur to me that i
would have trouble downgrading an essentially identical computer (just w/
more memory & a different hard drive & video card)

The problem appears to be with the SATA drive. The BIOS identifies the
drive as SATA and does not offer an IDE alternative. In another part of the
BIOS, I can choose between ACHI and RAID, but since I don't have RAID, that
doesn't seem to be a fix.

(I always dual-boot Windows machines with a nice "stable" version on C: and
the newer, less stable version on E:. I've found it endlessly helpful over
the years. When one of them crashes, which always happens, I can get into
the other one and continue working until I have time to fix whatever caused
the other to crash.)

dd