Author Topic: Skuzzy or any PC guru please help... win XP install problem (Read 282 times)

Mustaine · « **on:** December 07, 2006, 06:57:01 PM »

I'm at a friends house, installing win XP pro...

he has a dell with media center pre-loaded on a SATA drive.

there is some music software (Pro tools) that will NOT run on media center.

he went and bought a second SATA hard drive.

it is installed and recognized by windows as drive F (drive C is main HD drive D is DVD drive E is DVD burner)

we want to install XP pro as a dual-boot system with XP pro being on the new HD (drive F)

when going through the install windows does not recognize a "mass storage device" and we can not install.

reading the net i read about needing a motherboard manufacturer driver on a floppy disk, and during windows XP install hitting F6 to install 3rd party RAID or whatever....

he does not have a floppy drive on this machine.

we also do not have the motherboard manufacturer name or model.

is there any way to get this done?

my assumptions:
we must find the motherboard model and manufacturer, DL the SATA drivers, burn them on a CD put the CD in the 2nd CD drive and load the "3rd party" drivers from there.

is there another way?

lastly, when at the desktop putting in the brand new legally purchased win XP pro CD and choosing a new install (planning on choosing drive F) we never get to that point. we must first pass the product key, which fails. he has purchased 3 different XP pro disks, returned 2, all with the key failing.

my assumption: the version of XP media center edition already loaded on the system AND running when we try to do this method of installation is interfering with the registration key.

thanks a TON for any input, as we would LOVE to have pro tools running.

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Spatula · « **Reply #1 on:** December 07, 2006, 08:52:14 PM »

try DL the MOBO drivers and sticking them on your C: drive and pointing that way when you install XP Pro. OR a CD should do the trick. Funny tho, when i installed XP pro on my machine (which also has a SATA primary HDD), it just saw it and installed as normal - maybe my MOBO has a way to make it look like a regalar IDE drive? dunno...
Dunno about the 2nd issue - sounds odd.

Spatula · « **Reply #2 on:** December 07, 2006, 08:55:38 PM »

what do you mean by
"lastly, when at the desktop putting in the brand new legally purchased win XP pro CD and choosing a new install" are you trying to install XP pro from within Media Center OS? Try booting off the XP Pro disc and going from there.

Mustaine · « **Reply #3 on:** December 07, 2006, 09:14:22 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Spatula
what do you mean by
"lastly, when at the desktop putting in the brand new legally purchased win XP pro CD and choosing a new install" are you trying to install XP pro from within Media Center OS? Try booting off the XP Pro disc and going from there.

yeah, it was a suggestion we got off the net....

going from booting to the XP disk there is no option other than F3 (quit) as no mass storage devices dectected.

guess we will have to find the dell propritary MB drivers

hell the XP installation doesn't even see the C drive (where media center is installed) so we'll have to go off a CD in drive E

Roscoroo · « **Reply #4 on:** December 08, 2006, 12:50:51 AM »

if its a pre boxed pc AE dell , hp ,compactrasher ect

you should be able to get the drivers from there web site ... just enter the model number voila ...

and yes you have to load the sata drivers 1st and set the boot sequence up .

if its a huge drive its better to set up 2 partitions also .. i set mine up with a 40 gig primary and use whats left for the secondary .

OOZ662 · « **Reply #5 on:** December 08, 2006, 02:24:31 AM »

Not sure with Pro, but with Home it only searches the floppy drives for the device drivers.

JTs · « **Reply #6 on:** December 08, 2006, 07:16:33 PM »

you can build your own xp install cd that will include your sata drivers and what ever else you might need. go here and read the article on slipstream.

http://www.maximumpc.com/2005/01/how_to_slipstre.html

StarOfAfrica2 · « **Reply #7 on:** December 08, 2006, 07:26:37 PM »

If it absolutely requires a floppy, invest in a USB floppy drive. I dont have a floppy in my computer either, but until just recently BIOS updates required one. Some of them still do. Its handy to have around.

Mustaine · « **Reply #8 on:** December 08, 2006, 09:03:20 PM »

thanks for all the tips...

so far no go.

I brought over a floppy drive and hooked it up, and loaded what Dell "says" are the SATA drivers onto the disk.

I still get the error of no mass storage devices found during windows setup. what's strange is looking at the device manager, it seems we have and are loading the correct drivers during windows setup (F6 to enter 3rd party drivers) it finds them, loads them, but still no devices found later in the setup.

it is a mind boggler.

I still think for some odd reason it has something to do with the current win XP media center installed, but I don;t know how.

will keep trying, and if anyone comes up with anything new please let me know.

<~~> thanks all!~~

Wolfala · « **Reply #9 on:** December 09, 2006, 12:15:53 AM »

Did the SATA drives come with a disk for them to be formatted by first? Ya know, like Maxtor has a CD for its HD's - MAXBLAST which it formats to first before anything will see it.