Saturday, September 17, 2005

Clean XP Pro install on Dell Dimension 9100

The XP Pro w/ SP2 CD does not have the SATA driver, hence the need to specify one at install. My machine came w/ no floppy drive, so I had to (temporarily) install one. I believe a USB floppy can be used, but all I had was an internal. Either way the floppy has to be enabled in the BIOS.

  • Hit F2 to enter the BIOS on startup
  • Scroll down to drives, select floppy - hit enter
  • Enable the "internal floppy"

Now boot to the CD by hitting F12, select to boot from CD-ROM, Hit a key to boot from CD-ROM, then hit F6 to specify a driver.

The SATA driver is here:
http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/type.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&SystemID=DIM_P4_9100&os=WW1&osl=en&deviceid=8615

There will be a few choices when specifying the driver, I rolled the dice and chose the second on listed, not the RAID entry.

Then I was off and running