Dell Demension 8400

I am putting in a new hard drive I fdisked the drive and made a active partition however when I go to install windows it tells me no drive or gives me a stop error saying a utility is needed should I flash the bios would that help as it is a sata drive just does not want to install

 

If you're installing WinXP you don't need to do anything, Windows setup will allow you to create and format a partition.

If setup can't detect any hard disk then you probably will need to load the controller drivers first (Press F6 during the initial setup).

 

thanx but i get the error that xp cannot install on this drive so I do not get as far as to put f6 says something about a utility needed is there something special about the dell sata drive that I am missing

 

Okay, let's start from powering on the machine. You power on the machine, insert the WinXP disc, boot from the WinXP disc and then what?

Did this system previously have a SATA drive installed?

 

yes it had a sata drive previously and as I boot to the windows cd it stops right away asking for a utility program I have not seen this before and thought maybe it was something dell has like a bios flash

 

I've been using Dell Desktops for years and I've never heard of anything like this. What does it say exactly when it prompts about the utility? You can try flashing the BIOS but like I said I've never heard of this before.

 

Here is the drivers pagehttp://support.dell.com/support/downloads/driverslist.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&ServiceTag=&SystemID=DIM_PNT_P4_8400&os=WW1&osl=en&catid=&impid=
and there are two items listed under utility. Asset Utility might be the one you are asked for.

 

I have 4 settings in the bios
raid autodetect/ahci
raid autodetect/ata
raid on
all these get the same result after I do the f6 and install floppy with raid driver i get a message saying (no harddrive you may need to check your disk related hardware configuration this may involve running a manufacturers supplied diagnostic or setup program setup cannot continue)

if I use the other setting in the bios is combination I get either a stop error with blue screen or the the install gets to past the drivers .cab files then start showing up as not able to install till it finally says setup failed

this is a brand new drive,I used the dell operating disk supplied,also 2 other xp pro disks and even a 2000 system disk they all do the same I am sure not all these disks are errored or corrupted any help would be appreciated what could I be missing

 

I found out that you have to use a partitioning software called media direct I used this and still have the same problem of the setup disk when it is copying the files gets to the drivers.cab file then after that drops files saying they were not copied or error and windowsa may not work properly untill after about 5 of these the system just stops and tells me to reinstall windows as it did not complete properly .any ideas before I have to call dell support and get them to walk me through this frustrating machine

 

thanx all but I fixed it

I ran the qtpro program and found one of the ram sticks had bad sectors so I removed it and was able to install windows no problem

 

Glad to hear you got it installed and working, I knew something had to be bad or something because I've never heard of anything like this.