bootable ISO to detect all hardware with no OS?

OK guys!!

I have dug through all of the forums as well as googled and come up with SQUAT. I have an old Dell XPS 700 tower that was given to me and I am trying to put my own XP pro install on it with no luck. I have used nLiteOS to get past a BSOD only to get another one during the CD install. All of the driver tools I see on this site have to do AFTER your OS is installed but not to a naked tower! Is there a bootable ISO disc that can detect hardware on a naked tower so I can google the drivers? I installed Ubuntu on it and it works fine, or seems to. Of course, Ubuntu is more recent than XP.

I found one entry (I think here) where a user removed the video and/or other cards and THEN installed XP, THEN added them after. I haven't tried this yet, because I think it may be a Motherboard chipset issue. I even tried Driver BASE and user the uTorrent download to no avail.

I have a 64 bit CPU, 1 gig of RAM a dual DVI video card with PHYSX and it is a Dell XPS 700 tower. If someone solves this for me, I'll owe you a favor!!!!

 

Is this the SATA driver you slipstreamed? You might want to upgrade the BIOS if you have a floppy drive.

http://www.dell.com/support/drivers...5706&productCode=xps-700&urlProductCode=False

 

The SATA I slipped streamed had to do with a laptop I did a while back. On the XPS I have no SATA drivers, just an old IDE that I slapped in there. I don't have a floppy but I downloaded the BIOS update and the SATA drivers you pointed out. I might try to flash the BIOS from a USB drive or something. Is there more information that you need to know? Have you had this problem before?? Thanks!!

 

OK - I updated the BIOS but it was the same version 1.4.1. I had the same results. The CD installs, then the system reboots onto the hard drive, the I see the Xp logo, then it blue screens. Do you know of some universal XP driver database the I can get just the Dell stuff from?? And also, do you need to know any more information?

 

Check in your BIOS and look for something called IDE mode. It is possible that you have SATA mode enabled and that is why XP blue screens. Do you remember what the bluescreen error was.

Go to Dell support site and put in your service tag. It will give you all the drivers for your computer. But like you said, these are after the OS is installed.

Do not know of XP generic drivers except Driverpacks. I believe it is possible to slipstream the DriverPack drivers into an install disk. But, this might put it over the size of a CD. You could still try to install via USB boot though.

http://driverpacks.net/driverpacks/latest

 

OK Tgell!

You did it!!

I do not know how I missed that driver on the site because I downloaded gobs of stuff from Dell and got squat! I owe you a favor! ha ha!

 

Glad you got it fixed. Thanks for the feedback.