Ok ive searched this forum and found good helpful information on reformatting my dell computer with windows XP, but I rebooted, went to the boot menu with f12, and it turns out I have a SATA Hardrive. All advice found on this forum states I need to load the drivers from the manufacturer's CD onto a floppy disk and use it while reformatting. Now I have two problems with this step. 1) To my knowledge Dell never gave me a motherboard CD with the necessary drivers. 2) My computer does NOT have a floppy disk drive. Now is there a way to reformat without the drivers on a CD and without a floppy drive to load them? I hope so... Of course any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks guys. (i know this is a repost but i didnt know hich forum to put it in)
This is the only option I know of. What I would do is check Dell's website for the drivers. Just enter your product key and it will take you to the right place. Look for the sata floppy drivers there. It will probably be under the 'storage' category. It will be a small file (under 1 mb). After downloading that, go to filehippo.com and download ImgBurn. Rip your Windows XP disk at 2x or 4x speed using ImgBurn. Now download nLite from filehippo also. What you're going to do is slipstream the sata drivers onto the windows disk. Follow this guide and it will tell you how to do it. http://www.digitgeek.com/how-to-slipstream-sata-drivers-into-xp-cd/ That will create a Windows XP disk image with the sata drivers built into it. Then use ImgBurn to burn that image onto a blank cd. Then format and install like you normally would. It will automatically recognize your sata drive.
From your multipost that was closed The XP installation disk should contain all of the drivers necessary to get the basic XP installation running. The only driver that you may need to manually install after the intialization is the Ethernet driver to get Ethernet connectivity, then you can use the service tag to install the rest of the drivers. Alternately, you can do what I had to do for my ex-wife who blew up her sister's Dell PC. 1. Get the service Tag number 2. Take the service tag number and a USB memory stick (1GB will do) to a Kinko's or Internet cafe 3. D/L all of the drivers to the memory stick from the Dell website using the service tag number.
don't need a service tag for dell as long as you know the make & model# of the dell. i do that all the time when a member with a dell is asking for drivers. http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/index.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen
Yes, but it is my experience that a white tag that says "service" tag is typically easier to identify and read as opposed to piecing together a model and modle number. (least common denominator) Also because the dell support save has an entry for service tag versus having to drill down with the model number. You say toe-may-toe, I say toh-mah-toe.
i find it easier to ask for make & model# as have sometimes seen service tag in the bios & a lot of members don't know how to access the bios to get the tag number.
