Guest djneill@iwebworks.com Posted July 10, 2007 Posted July 10, 2007 Hi, Background: I am a newb. I have a pretty good Dell machine (3 GHz, 1 GB RAM) that I just don't use much, and I had used a Ubuntu live disk to make a dual-boot. Now, I am selling it to a friend and I was going to try to format it. Well, I decided to try to boot from the XP CD and after getting to the 3-way: install, recovery console, exit, I went ahead and tried recover but it says there are no hard drives detected. Same if I try to just install XP. But in the BIOS, the hard drive is there. And it works fine booting to either XP or Ubuntu still. I googled and found that the SATA HDD drivers might need to be obtained on a floppy, and have it ready when it prompts to press <F6> early in the boot to the XP CD. Is this what I need? Also, this computer does not have an internal floppy drive. Will it treat an external USB floppy drive as a floppy after <F6>? For any help, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks, Dan
Guest Rich Barry Posted July 10, 2007 Posted July 10, 2007 Re: newb - XP install disk says there are no hard drives If you are using Grub as your bootloader you have to clear the MBR. I use a Win98SE bootdisk with fdisk and format on it. If your Bios sees the External Floppy Drive then at the A:\ type fdisk /mbr You can get one at http://www.bootdisk.com From a Linux Terminal the command is dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdx bs=512 count=1 Just replace the x with whatever the actual letter is. You may have to Do it from root using a LiveCd. But you could try it from within Ubuntu. Also, using GParted you can delete the Linux Partition and the Windows Partition. You can recreate them using the WinXP Cd. Once you get the Cd to recognize the drive then you will probably need a floppy with the SATA Drivers on it. <djneill@iwebworks.com> wrote in message news:1184041043.433307.269190@q75g2000hsh.googlegroups.com... > Hi, > > Background: > I am a newb. > > I have a pretty good Dell machine (3 GHz, 1 GB RAM) that I just don't > use much, and I had used a Ubuntu live disk to make a dual-boot. Now, > I am selling it to a friend and I was going to try to format it. > Well, I decided to try to boot from the XP CD and after getting to the > 3-way: install, recovery console, exit, I went ahead and tried > recover but it says there are no hard drives detected. Same if I try > to just install XP. But in the BIOS, the hard drive is there. And it > works fine booting to either XP or Ubuntu still. > > I googled and found that the SATA HDD drivers might need to be > obtained on a floppy, and have it ready when it prompts to press <F6> > early in the boot to the XP CD. > > Is this what I need? > > Also, this computer does not have an internal floppy drive. Will it > treat an external USB floppy drive as a floppy after <F6>? > > For any help, I would greatly appreciate it. > > Thanks, > Dan >
Guest John John Posted July 10, 2007 Posted July 10, 2007 Re: newb - XP install disk says there are no hard drives djneill@iwebworks.com wrote: > Hi, > > Background: > I am a newb. > > I have a pretty good Dell machine (3 GHz, 1 GB RAM) that I just don't > use much, and I had used a Ubuntu live disk to make a dual-boot. Now, > I am selling it to a friend and I was going to try to format it. > Well, I decided to try to boot from the XP CD and after getting to the > 3-way: install, recovery console, exit, I went ahead and tried > recover but it says there are no hard drives detected. Same if I try > to just install XP. But in the BIOS, the hard drive is there. And it > works fine booting to either XP or Ubuntu still. > > I googled and found that the SATA HDD drivers might need to be > obtained on a floppy, and have it ready when it prompts to press <F6> > early in the boot to the XP CD. > > Is this what I need? > > Also, this computer does not have an internal floppy drive. Will it > treat an external USB floppy drive as a floppy after <F6>? > > For any help, I would greatly appreciate it. Most likely the F6 driver issue is the cause of the problem. You can either fit a diskette drive to the computer, even if only temporarilly or you can use a USB floppy but not all USB drives are compatible with the F6 process: A connected USB floppy disk drive does not work when you press F6 to install mass storage drivers during the Windows XP installation process http://support.microsoft.com/kb/916196 John
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