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Posted on Nov 23, 2008
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Dell Dimension 8400 cannot see SATA drive when trying to do clean install on new drive or on old drive. Thought the old drive went belly up but new drive does same results. Setup of drive using western digital tools sees the drive but windows xp setup does not even after making sure it sees the intell sata drive controller. Any ideas? Can the controller be the problem causing all of this? It is on the motherboard.

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  • jedweb Nov 23, 2008

    Yes, the only driver that has the txtsetup.oem file is one for the SATA controller.  I did that and it still cannot recognize the drive even though it now recognizes the sata controller.  The western digital drive that I bought doesn't seem to have any downloadable drivers for it.  So, I'm not sure what route to take now.

  • jedweb Nov 23, 2008

    Yes, I did that before.  It still doesn't recognize the hard drive despite the correct sata driver being installed.  It didn't work to allow the drive to be recognized.

  • jedweb Nov 23, 2008

    No, has to be a SATA  drive.

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JDTec

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  • Posted on Nov 23, 2008
JDTec
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It is not a controller problem. When you install XP with a SATA drive, You get to a point on the install where you are asked if you have 3rd party divers to install. You have to hit F6 and point it to where the SATA drivers are. You need the SATA divers for you unit. Dell may have them on their website.
Without the SATA drivers, Xp will not see the serial drive.


If I could be of further assistance, let me know. If this helps or solves the issue, please rate it.
Thanks, Joe


I’m happy to assist further over the phone at https://www.6ya.com/expert/joe_8b8c2cd6ce148309

  • JDTec
    JDTec Nov 23, 2008

    The SATA drivers are for the controller on the main board. The type of drive does not matter.

    Here is Dell's website with your model and SATA drivers:



    http://support.dell.com/support/download...=



    copy and paste the complete link into your browser.

    If I could be of further assistance, let me know. If this helps or solves the issue, please rate it.

    Thanks, Joe

  • JDTec
    JDTec Nov 23, 2008

    Does your unit have IDE connectors? I would install a IDE drive.

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