Annoying Install Question!

[fvgazi]

Hey guys I know this doesn't really have anything to do with Retro Gaming, but I figured some of you are pretty knowledgeable about booting problems.

My friend punched his laptop a while ago (for unknown reasons) and he has problems booting into XP (home). It's a Dell Latitude 131L. He tried reinstalling windows, but he wasn't able to.

Now I have the computer and when I try to do a fresh install it's saying windows can't find the HDD. I've done some research because this is is a SATA HDD and I found that XP doesn't support SATA out of the box. I've been looking for SATA controllers or drivers to slipstream into the XP SP2 cd that came with his computer.

Another annoying thing is that navigating the BIOS is REALLY slow! It can take up to 7 or 8 min just to change between options after pressing the keys a bunch of times. I've looked for options to set SATA to IDE emulation (or whatever it's called) and there isn't anything available.

He doesn't really care about it being set to SATA because he is selling the computer for like $100 once it's fixed (if possible).

I don't have an external floppy and I searched the Dell site for the correct drivers for a long time and came up with nothing compatible for his computer.

Any help will be appreciated.

[Hobie-wan]

If bios is acting screwey like that it's probably going to be a lost cause. This appears to be the chipset drivers for that laptop though, so if they're put on a disc, perhaps you can divert to grab them when the XP install asks you for drivers?

http://support.dell.com/support/downloa ... eid=179629

[opticledilusi0n]

in bios change ahci to native, legacy, or ide . depending on what they decide to use for a name .
not sure where dell keeps that setting on that particular notebook .

but if you change that, xp will find the drive

[fvgazi]

in bios change ahci to native, legacy, or ide . depending on what they decide to use for a name .
not sure where dell keeps that setting on that particular notebook .

but if you change that, xp will find the drive

I've looked and there are no options for ahci. The only thing that comes close is "fixed disk = none" and I can't even change the option. I'm thinking something may be wrong with the HDD. The BIOS doesn't even see it.

I've tried using the Hitachi DFT, but its not able to find the HDD either. It also hangs forever saying "loading dft..." after it fails a few diagnostics.

If slipstreaming the drivers that Hobie-wan posted doesn't work, then i'll just hook it up to my PC and check the HDD health and stuff.

Can I install XP to the HDD with updated drivers if it's hooked up to my PC and then transfer it back to the laptop?

[Hobie-wan]

Can I install XP to the HDD with updated drivers if it's hooked up to my PC and then transfer it back to the laptop?

You can kinda cheat. If you install XP but then tell it no as much as possible once it makes it to the desktop and it keeps finding devices to install. Then you'd need to mostly gut device manager since all the mobo stuff and whatnot will be different from the laptop. You'd basically need to remove everything from device manager and keep telling it no to the reboot. Once you've got it clean, you can probably shut down, shove it in the laptop, then see if it boots far enough to start putting things back in. I did this once when I upgraded processor and motherboard on an XP machine, but everything else was the same and I didn't want to reinstall stuff.

[fvgazi]

I really appreciate all the help guys, but I found out the drive was just bad. I had hooked it up to my computer after exhausting all the other options and it wasn't recognized. The drive never spins up (hooked up to my pc or the original laptop), and the BIOS can't find it either.

Thanks again though!