Aaargh!

On Wednesday, January 30, 2013 12:36:45 AM UTC-5, 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.

Better late than never... I use a Windows XP with SP3 CD to install on any and all systems that require XP. SP3 does integrate the required SATA drives. Don't recall if SP2 does, but the original XP CD and the one with SP1 do not... Ben Myers

On 2/13/2013 10:51 AM, Ben Myers wrote:
On Wednesday, January 30, 2013 12:36:45 AM UTC-5, 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.


Better late than never... I use a Windows XP with SP3 CD to install on any and all systems that require XP. SP3 does integrate the required SATA drives. Don't recall if SP2 does, but the original XP CD and the one with SP1 do not... Ben Myers


Thanks, Ben. Though left unsaid in my original post, I had a CD with XP
Pro SP3 on it. It was NOT the original Dell setup disk, but rather one
that I'd built using the commonly available technique. No joy.

I found a recommendation from a Dell support person that was hidden away
on a forum that said to change from the default BIOS selection regarding
the RAID driver and make it an ATA rather than a SATA.

That did the trick. It's up, running and problem free so far.

On Sat, 02 Feb 2013 15:01:16 +0400, Happy Oyster wrote:

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.

The difference between AHCI and ATA mode is the support of hot-swappable
drives (irrelevant in notebooks), native command queuing (NCQ), and the
use of a flash module as a hard drive cache. You'll probably notice a
small performance boost by turning it on.

However, once you have installed an OS you can't change the operation on
a whim. The OS has to be installed for the desired setting, and then
can't be changed.

On Wednesday, January 30, 2013 12:36:45 AM UTC-5, 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.

Late response. If you are installing XP, be VERY careful with the SATA settings in the BIOS. The newer faster better improved AHCI setting works only with XP SP3. If one is installing from SP2 or earlier, revert back to the other BIOS setting. I forget what the exact setting is, 'cause I do not have an 8400 running at the moment, but it is NOT AHCI.

Also, replace the C2032 3v CMOS battery whenever there are strange and inexplicable problems... Ben Myers