[robyncr]

I'm trying to fix a friends computer and having a hell of a time. It's a Dell Dimension 4700 it's a pent. 4, it has a 160 GB SATA Hard drive, 512 MB of RAM, Memory speed 400 MHZ, CPU 2.80 GHz ,Clock speed 2.80 MHz,, Bus speed 800 MHz. When she brought it to me I turned it on and it said Diskette Drive 0 Seek Failure. That was it. There was no operating sysyem on it it was running windows xp home. So I did what I thought would be right and did a Fdisk and Format and started over from strach, Cause I know to be able to install windows xp you already have to have an operating system installed. So after I got it fdisked and formatted I installed windows 98 the install went fine until the last part where it is going through the installing drives and verifiying and then has to restart well it restarts comes up the win98 screen and freezes, so I restart it and its comes up with the safe mode option which going into safe mode is no help at all so about after the 3rd or 4th time of this I tell it to go to normal mode and then the screen goes black with a straight blinking cursor at the top left corner of screen and then the computer shuts off. I have checked the power supply and all fans they are working fine, so heats not the problem, besides I can let it do a complete surface scan which takes a good 3 hours or more and it doesn't shut off. I am at my wits end trying to figure this out. Sorry for such a long post but I wanted to tell all I hope I didn't leave anything out. Please help thankyou in advance.

[Mike0001]

Have you tried to get a Windows98 SATA driver from the motherboard manufacturer. You might have to install it in safe mode.

Alternatively, if the Dell has an XP Certificate of Authenticity, why not reinstall XP?

[robyncr]

No I haven't tried the SATA driver and the reason I haven't installed the windows xp is because it wont let me install without having an existing OS already installed it tells me this can not be run in Dos mode.

[Mike0001]

Originally Posted by robyncr No I haven't tried the SATA driver and the reason I haven't installed the windows xp is because it wont let me install without having an existing OS already installed it tells me this can not be run in Dos mode.

This is incorrect! If you boot from the XP disk you can install on a blank disk, but perhaps you have an upgrade version of the XP CD?

Your only hope I think is to get the SATA driver that works with Windows98, or a full version XP SP2 CD.

[robyncr]

I have tried booting with the windows xp cd and it does nothing.The windows xp that I have came with the Dell computer I'm working on. Also I have tried to find the SATA driver for my mother board with no luck. Any ideas?

[robyncr]

The motherboard I have is a E210882 Dell REV A01. Which gave me different numbers for Intel Motherboards I have checked with Dell no luck and I have checked with Intel and the only drivers or applications to be gotten are for the Bios update, can't find anything on Sata drivers.

[Mike0001]

ok you have a restore disk from Dell! Try to borrow an XP disk!

[robyncr]

I finally got windows ME to install on this computer by changing in the BIOS the drive to read older versions that may not support SATA drives, and now my problem is now I cant get the computer to pick up the cd/dvd drive it's like it's not even there. I even tried rebooting using the ME boot disk using the option to start with cd rom support. I still cant boot with the windows xp cd cause the computer is not loading the cd rom but it shows it in the BIOS. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

[Mike0001]

Have you looked at the structure of files on your XP CD? Is it a restore image or does it have a file structure with an i386 folder somewhere?

As I said, find someone with a proper XP CD!

[robyncr]

The cd I have has the i386 folder on the cd. But if you read my latest post you would see the new problem i'm having I would please like you to address that if you could, I'm not sure what you told me has anything to do with what I asked in my latest post. Thankyou in advance.