Comments on: Dell Dimension 8400 Harddrive: SATA Drivers

By: burchwords

burchwords — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 02:46:50 +0000

if you cannot get passed the \”examining\” screen, you might have a bad hard drive. Do a check disk on it from the recovery console.

By: Ysw

Ysw — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 00:51:23 +0000

I followed all the the steps to have arrived this blue screen:
Top: Windows XP Home Edition Setup
Middle: Blank
Bottom: Examning 76294 MB Disk 0 at Id 0 bus 0 on atapi…
Stalled there!
Can anyone tell me what to do?
Thaks.
YSW

By: burchwords

burchwords — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 01:53:09 +0000

no prob, bob

By: Formerly Frustrated

Formerly Frustrated — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 18:51:30 +0000

Wow! I have been working on a computer for a week with no sucess. I found this site, and boom…done! Thank you for sharing the knowledge!

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 00:29:14 +0000

Hey thanks for the link… amazingly it does not come up when you enter the service tag and sends you on a while goose chase. I am an IT professional and you just saved me hours of hunting. Appreciate it bro!

By: joe

joe — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 21:31:19 +0000

What in the hell is a 'floppy drive'??!

By: burchwords

burchwords — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 15:19:05 +0000

You need to download your ethernet drivers and sound drivers from Dell.

By: Len

Len — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 14:25:38 +0000

I replaced the Hard drive in my dim 8400 , accidently left the printer and my router plugged in when I installed Windows XP now I have no internet connection and no sound. I was able to get the printer working ok. Any suggestions?

By: Jerry

Jerry — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 17:28:20 +0000

Step #2 did the trick for me. Thanks!

By: Clingon

Clingon — Fri, 14 May 2010 18:07:17 +0000

How to Install XP on DeLL Dimensions 8400 with a SATA Drive

I found this posted at DeLL & it worked for me.
The Key is to Set Step 3

Posted by Shadowrunner
on 3 Feb 2005 11:01 PM
o rated by 0 users
o Re: Install XP on SATA system with no floppy
o
To install windows xp sp1 on the dimension 8400 without using a floppy drive, try doing the following steps:

1. Go into the BIOS by pressing F2 on the Dell Logo
2. Go to Drives, then select SATA Operation.
3. Change RAID Auto/AHCI to RAID Auto/ATA
4. Press ESC and save the changes to setup
5. Boot to the windows XP disk, no need to press F6 but just continue the installation process.

The reason for this is windows xp sp1 does not have the native drivers for sata hard drives, changing this setting will allow you to use ATA mode which basically is the technology used by IDE hard drive, if you dont change this setting the system will say something like no hard drive found, by changing the setting the computer should be able to detect the hard drive and continue the installation. Windows XP SP2 cds however should continue the installation without having to change this setting as they contain drivers necessary for SATA hard drive.
http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/disk-...