Aaargh!

Help!

Dimension 8400 with 500GB SATA drive takes a dump after acting flakey
for awhile.

Pull the drive and go to install Win XP Pro on a brand new 500GB Seagate
Barracuda.

BIOS recognizes drive, OS Disk (for Dell Bios) loads up all the
temporary OS files and takes me to the choice of Enter to Install, R for
Repair or F3 to get out of Dodge.

I hit Enter and the response is "Silly Wabbit you have no hard drive in
this machine."

Okay... Went through the same drill with a couple of different Win Xp
install disks, two difference hard drives (both KNOWN working drives)and
the response is always the same: "Sorry, no hard drive."

Tried this with and without the Seagate Disk Management SW which
reported no errors (as did the BIOS when testing the drive, etc.)

One of the two drives I had around was loaded with Vista Business Pro(?)
and I tossed that in and it booted right up. No errors, no fuss.

As I didn't need/want Vista Business, I left it place and tried to
overwrite it with Windows XP. You guessed it: "NO HARD DRIVE DETECTED,
Stupid... How many times do I have to tell you?"

A savvy friend, hearing this, said, See if you can reformat it and/or
wipe the partition on that Vista drive that you KNOW is working in the
machine. Took EaseUS Partition disc, in the same CD-Rom drive and wiped
that sucker clean. Even did a security wipe in addition to removing the
partitions. No Joy. Still won't detect the drive with the install
disks. WTF?

After wiping, tried again with the disk management software from Western
Digital. Partitioned and formatted the drive and... Crap! Same thing.

What, if anything, am I missing here? Other than putting a bullet into
that box, any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

On Tuesday, January 29, 2013 11:36:45 PM UTC-6, Unquestionably Confused wrote:
Help!



Dimension 8400 with 500GB SATA drive takes a dump after acting flakey

for awhile.



Pull the drive and go to install Win XP Pro on a brand new 500GB Seagate

Barracuda.



BIOS recognizes drive, OS Disk (for Dell Bios) loads up all the

temporary OS files and takes me to the choice of Enter to Install, R for

Repair or F3 to get out of Dodge.



I hit Enter and the response is "Silly Wabbit you have no hard drive in

this machine."



Okay... Went through the same drill with a couple of different Win Xp

install disks, two difference hard drives (both KNOWN working drives)and

the response is always the same: "Sorry, no hard drive."



Tried this with and without the Seagate Disk Management SW which

reported no errors (as did the BIOS when testing the drive, etc.)



One of the two drives I had around was loaded with Vista Business Pro(?)

and I tossed that in and it booted right up. No errors, no fuss.



As I didn't need/want Vista Business, I left it place and tried to

overwrite it with Windows XP. You guessed it: "NO HARD DRIVE DETECTED,

Stupid... How many times do I have to tell you?"



A savvy friend, hearing this, said, See if you can reformat it and/or

wipe the partition on that Vista drive that you KNOW is working in the

machine. Took EaseUS Partition disc, in the same CD-Rom drive and wiped

that sucker clean. Even did a security wipe in addition to removing the

partitions. No Joy. Still won't detect the drive with the install

disks. WTF?



After wiping, tried again with the disk management software from Western

Digital. Partitioned and formatted the drive and... Crap! Same thing.



What, if anything, am I missing here? Other than putting a bullet into

that box, any suggestions?



Thanks in advance.

Everything points to no SATA drivers except for the Vista install. When I had this problem I used nLite (freeware) and made an install disc with added drivers for SATA.
I can't offer anything else!
http://www.nliteos.com/

On Wed, 30 Jan 2013 03:55:46 -0800 (PST), Bob_Villa
wrote:

On Tuesday, January 29, 2013 11:36:45 PM UTC-6, Unquestionably Confused wrote:
Help!



Dimension 8400 with 500GB SATA drive takes a dump after acting flakey

for awhile.



Pull the drive and go to install Win XP Pro on a brand new 500GB Seagate

Barracuda.



BIOS recognizes drive, OS Disk (for Dell Bios) loads up all the

temporary OS files and takes me to the choice of Enter to Install, R for

Repair or F3 to get out of Dodge.



I hit Enter and the response is "Silly Wabbit you have no hard drive in

this machine."



Okay... Went through the same drill with a couple of different Win Xp

install disks, two difference hard drives (both KNOWN working drives)and

the response is always the same: "Sorry, no hard drive."



Tried this with and without the Seagate Disk Management SW which

reported no errors (as did the BIOS when testing the drive, etc.)



One of the two drives I had around was loaded with Vista Business Pro(?)

and I tossed that in and it booted right up. No errors, no fuss.



As I didn't need/want Vista Business, I left it place and tried to

overwrite it with Windows XP. You guessed it: "NO HARD DRIVE DETECTED,

Stupid... How many times do I have to tell you?"



A savvy friend, hearing this, said, See if you can reformat it and/or

wipe the partition on that Vista drive that you KNOW is working in the

machine. Took EaseUS Partition disc, in the same CD-Rom drive and wiped

that sucker clean. Even did a security wipe in addition to removing the

partitions. No Joy. Still won't detect the drive with the install

disks. WTF?



After wiping, tried again with the disk management software from Western

Digital. Partitioned and formatted the drive and... Crap! Same thing.



What, if anything, am I missing here? Other than putting a bullet into

that box, any suggestions?



Thanks in advance.

Everything points to no SATA drivers except for the Vista install. When I had this problem I used nLite (freeware) and made an install disc with added drivers for SATA.
I can't offer anything else!
http://www.nliteos.com/


Agreed. I went thru the same thing as the OP.

On 1/30/2013 5:55 AM, Bob_Villa wrote:

Everything points to no SATA drivers except for the Vista install. When I had this problem I used nLite (freeware) and made an install disc with added drivers for SATA.
I can't offer anything else!
http://www.nliteos.com/

Eureka! (Or perhaps, it's "Oh, crap!") You may have hit it on the
head. I wasn't clear on the Vista install. That was a preexisting
install on a SATA drive from ANOTHER Dell box. I did not attempt to
install it on the 8400, just plugged it in and let it rip.

I'll give this a try (also see if I can find the installation disks for
this specific computer. Wouldn't you know that they are the ONLY set
that I couldn't find?)

Thank you... THANK YOU!

On 1/30/2013 5:38 AM, Unquestionably Confused wrote:
On 1/30/2013 5:55 AM, Bob_Villa wrote:

Everything points to no SATA drivers except for the Vista install.
When I had this problem I used nLite (freeware) and made an install
disc with added drivers for SATA.
I can't offer anything else!
http://www.nliteos.com/

Eureka! (Or perhaps, it's "Oh, crap!") You may have hit it on the
head. I wasn't clear on the Vista install. That was a preexisting
install on a SATA drive from ANOTHER Dell box. I did not attempt to
install it on the 8400, just plugged it in and let it rip.

I'll give this a try (also see if I can find the installation disks for
this specific computer. Wouldn't you know that they are the ONLY set
that I couldn't find?)

Thank you... THANK YOU!



Our experience with older motherboards with bioses or chipsets
that were not updated to natively identify SATA ports required
that the appropriate SATA driver be loaded before installing WinXP.
Microsoft evidently adds this warning for new Win7 installations
for motherboards which are not Win7-prepped by manufacturer.

GR

On 1/30/2013 2:27 PM, Ghostrider 00 wrote:

Our experience with older motherboards with bioses or chipsets
that were not updated to natively identify SATA ports required
that the appropriate SATA driver be loaded before installing WinXP.
Microsoft evidently adds this warning for new Win7 installations
for motherboards which are not Win7-prepped by manufacturer.

That may be the case for some, but not for me. The 8400 is shipped with
the SATA drives. I thought I'd let you all know the end (or the rest
of... - ala Paul Harvey) of this story.

Convinced that I was lacking drivers on the reinstallation disk for Dell
(remember I did NOT have the specific install disk for the Dimension
8400), I went searching for a copy that I could download. Didn't find
that but DID find this little gem out on the net:

Begin Quoted Material

"My name is Krishna and I work for the Social Media and Community Team
at Dell. You need to change the drive options to "RAID Autodetect/ATA"
and then reinstall Windows XP.

If this doesn't help , you need to download the Intel Application
Accelerator RAID Edition drivers from the Dell website. You can download
the file from http://dell.to/JejqXY and save it on a floppy disk. When
you're starting your reinstallation of Windows XP, make sure you have
the floppy disk with the downloaded file in the Floppy drive. As soon as
you see the blue screen hit the F6 key in order to install third-party
RAID drivers. Just follow the prompts."

End Quoted Material

Isn't it wonderful that Dell ships their machines out with a SATA drive
yet has the system BIOS default setting to "RAID Autodetect/AHCI" - Just
what you DON'T want if you have to pull out the Restore Disks and reload
the machine.

Once I changed it to "RAID Autodetect/ATA" the non-default setting, it
worked like a charm! The computer is up and running with the old drive
that it formerly said did not exist other than in the mind of the BIOS.

Thanks again to all for their suggestions and guidance. In the end it
was a very simple fix for a problem caused by Dell.

On Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:20:55 -0600, Unquestionably Confused
wrote:

On 1/30/2013 2:27 PM, Ghostrider 00 wrote:

Our experience with older motherboards with bioses or chipsets
that were not updated to natively identify SATA ports required
that the appropriate SATA driver be loaded before installing WinXP.
Microsoft evidently adds this warning for new Win7 installations
for motherboards which are not Win7-prepped by manufacturer.

That may be the case for some, but not for me. The 8400 is shipped with
the SATA drives. I thought I'd let you all know the end (or the rest
of... - ala Paul Harvey) of this story.

Convinced that I was lacking drivers on the reinstallation disk for Dell
(remember I did NOT have the specific install disk for the Dimension
8400), I went searching for a copy that I could download. Didn't find
that but DID find this little gem out on the net:

Begin Quoted Material

"My name is Krishna and I work for the Social Media and Community Team
at Dell. You need to change the drive options to "RAID Autodetect/ATA"
and then reinstall Windows XP.

If this doesn't help , you need to download the Intel Application
Accelerator RAID Edition drivers from the Dell website. You can download
the file from http://dell.to/JejqXY and save it on a floppy disk. When
you're starting your reinstallation of Windows XP, make sure you have
the floppy disk with the downloaded file in the Floppy drive. As soon as
you see the blue screen hit the F6 key in order to install third-party
RAID drivers. Just follow the prompts."

End Quoted Material

Isn't it wonderful that Dell ships their machines out with a SATA drive
yet has the system BIOS default setting to "RAID Autodetect/AHCI" - Just
what you DON'T want if you have to pull out the Restore Disks and reload
the machine.

Once I changed it to "RAID Autodetect/ATA" the non-default setting, it
worked like a charm! The computer is up and running with the old drive
that it formerly said did not exist other than in the mind of the BIOS.

Thanks again to all for their suggestions and guidance. In the end it
was a very simple fix for a problem caused by Dell.






Thanks to you for updating us too !!!

On Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:20:55 -0600, Unquestionably Confused
wrote:


"My name is Krishna and I work for the Social Media and Community Team
at Dell. You need to change the drive options to "RAID Autodetect/ATA"
and then reinstall Windows XP.

If this doesn't help , you need to download the Intel Application
Accelerator RAID Edition drivers from the Dell website. You can download
the file from http://dell.to/JejqXY and save it on a floppy disk. When
you're starting your reinstallation of Windows XP, make sure you have
the floppy disk with the downloaded file in the Floppy drive. As soon as
you see the blue screen hit the F6 key in order to install third-party
RAID drivers. Just follow the prompts."

End Quoted Material

Isn't it wonderful that Dell ships their machines out with a SATA drive
yet has the system BIOS default setting to "RAID Autodetect/AHCI" - Just
what you DON'T want if you have to pull out the Restore Disks and reload
the machine.

Hi, what is the difference between?:

"RAID Autodetect/AHCI"

"RAID Autodetect/ATA"

Other notebooks/netbooks also have really strange effects with installs
of Win XP and Win 7.

Merci,
--

http://www.twitter.com/aribertdeckers http://www.Journalist.is
http://www.kindersprechstunde.at http://www.pharmamafia.com
http://www.medulla.at http://www.ariplex.com/folia
http://www.ariplex.com/pixaloid http://www.ariplex.com/lyme/lymeblog

On Sat, 02 Feb 2013 08:01:54 -0600, Unquestionably Confused
wrote:

As for whatever else it may involve, I really have to claim ignorance on
that point. I never used/encountered the settings previously.

The same for me. I by accident ran into looking into the BIOS and got a
glimpse of "AHCI". Have no idea what it means. Your description tells me
that this thing might cause trouble. As the machine did mess up, I have
one more parameter to keep an eye on.
--

http://www.twitter.com/aribertdeckers http://www.Journalist.is
http://www.kindersprechstunde.at http://www.pharmamafia.com
http://www.medulla.at http://www.ariplex.com/folia
http://www.ariplex.com/pixaloid http://www.ariplex.com/lyme/lymeblog

On 2/1/2013 3:03 PM, Happy Oyster wrote:
On Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:20:55 -0600, Unquestionably Confused
wrote:

Isn't it wonderful that Dell ships their machines out with a SATA drive
yet has the system BIOS default setting to "RAID Autodetect/AHCI" - Just
what you DON'T want if you have to pull out the Restore Disks and reload
the machine.

Hi, what is the difference between?:

"RAID Autodetect/AHCI"

"RAID Autodetect/ATA"

Other notebooks/netbooks also have really strange effects with installs
of Win XP and Win 7.


The most important difference is that the type drive (SATA) that Dell
ships with the computer will not re-install unless you change their
default setting in the BIOS. That's almost as stupid as shipping a
desktop without providing a 3.5" floppy and making the 3.5" floppy not
only the first drive in the boot sequence, but not providing a selection
for anything else.g

As for whatever else it may involve, I really have to claim ignorance on
that point. I never used/encountered the settings previously. I was
quite satisfied in the machine's performance right out of the box and
had not found any need to change things around until the re-install
became necessary.