Loading SATA Drivers while Installing XP from Boot

SillyHeatsink

SillyHeatsink

SillyHeatsink

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I'm in a bit of a pickle.

Reinstalling Windows XP Home Ed 32 bit from boot on my brother's PC (Dell Dimension 8100).
The XP CD boots, and I get as far as hitting enter to confirm a fresh XP install.
However, after that it says that no hard drives are detected.
There is one HDD - a Seagate Barracude 160gb, SATA 150. In order to get XP to recognise it, I need to load the drivers separately (by hitting F6) to tell it to load third party drivers.
I have been to the Dell website, and found the correct chipset drivers. However! The .exe downloaded creates a bootable floppy that provides the drivers, and will only provide a bootable floppy.
I don't have a floppy drive, haven't used em since the last century. Does anyone know of a way I can get these drivers into the install? Preferably on a USB or similar.

Cheers guys, any help is appreciated, I'm at my wit's end here.
 
getting hold of a usb floppy drive would be the simplest of options...
that or you could load of the drives onto the cd (using a different computer). that would take abit of faffing around though.
 
Have you tried putting them on a USB drive? I haven't had to do this for some time, but when I did I had to use a floppy disk.
 
Yeah, a USB floppy seems my best option.
I procured an antique Roman floppy from the shed. Problem is, the Dell doesn't have the power supply 4-pin output necessary for floppies. So I have an old PSU now I'm going to jerry-rig it with.
Odd that the Dell mobo has floppy connections, but the PSU doesn't. Then that's Dell for you.
There's bound to be a way of decompiling the .exe to separate out the drivers, anyone know how to do this?
 
Skyfall said:
Have you tried putting them on a USB drive? I haven't had to do this for some time, but when I did I had to use a floppy disk.
Click to expand...

I'd love to put them on a USB pen drive, but the .exe I downloaded from Dell won't allow me to do that, it only allows for a floppy to be written.
I am tempted to just copy the .exe to the floppy and try and load drivers from that, but that's desperation speaking!
 
Is this one of the old 8100's with RDRAM? Didn't think they had SATA.

Get the drivers from the chipset manufacturers website.
 
Nope, DDR RAM.
My google-fu has failed me in obtaining the chipset drivers. I'll look harder after dinner, I really can't be having with this floppy malarky. Getting the drivers in a format which will allow me to load them via USB is the ideal solution.
Cheers for the help, chaps.
 
You won't be able to use a USB pen drive, it will have to be a USB floppy. Best method is to slipstream the drivers into a new Windows CD.

Which chipset does the motherboard use?

If I google Dell Dimension 8100, all I see is the old RDRAM model.
 
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ns400r said:
You won't be able to use a USB pen drive, it will have to be a USb floppy. Best method is to slipstream the drivers into a new Windows CD.

Which chipset does the motherboard use?

If I google Dell Dimension 8100, all I see is the old RDRAM model.
Click to expand...

Looks like it's gonna have to be the floppy then.
I don't know the motherboard chipset, but there's a sticker on the board that says CN-0X8582 70821 579 G02M.

Heh, I am a retard, I apologise for my poor typing. PC is a Dimension 9100: http://support.euro.dell.com/suppor...temID=DIM_P4_9100&os=WW1&osl=en&catid=&impid=
 
'tis an Intel chipset(945P).
Get the drivers you need for an F6 install directly from the Intel site.
 
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.one. said:
I can not do with out me floppy never been with out it.
Click to expand...

Truer words have never been spoken.
I have made a floppy with the drivers supplied by Dell on their support site. So far so good with that, but I came up to a screen making me choose between ICH6 and ICH7. I checked with CPU-Z and it gave me the following information on my mobo:
i945P
82801GB (ICH7/R)
When I booted into the Windows install this time, I hit F6. It then gave me the choice between four drivers to load from the floppy, none of which matched my motherboard. Two were ICH6, two ICH7:
82801 GR/GH SATA RAID Controller (Desktop ICH7R/DH)
82801 GR/GH SATA AHCI Controller (Desktop ICH7R/DH)

I have tried both. Both result in a BSOD when setup attempts to launch windows for the install. I'm at the end of my tether; I've formatted many PCs including a few Dells but never came across crap like this. I'm going to go hunt for the drivers on the Intel website, since the ones Dell supply are incorrect.
 
I gave up on the whole trying too load sata controllers during XP boot, theres plenty of sata built in custom XPs out there, or as above said u can check for ACHI mode or compatibility IDE mode in the bios.
 
Bit late for an update, but! in the end I used ctrl+f11 to boot to the Dell restore partition.
Not the ideal solution, as all the pre-loaded adware that came with the system were reinstalled(lol, Dell), but the SATA drivers were simply not wanting to be loaded.
I tried fiddling the BIOS, but the functionality simply was not there (lol, Dell).
Makes you wonder that they sold a PC with a XP disc that did not work with the hardware configuration. Do they not test these things? Ah well, over and done with now.
Once again, cheers for the help!
 
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