Reinstall XP Pro SP2 w SATA for Vostro 1500

Hi all:

My wife has a 3-year old Vostro 1500 running Xp Pro, Sp3, and it was somewhat messed up (wouldn't accept Windows updates, the Firewall stopped working, and couldn't be turned on even with administrative tools, stopped being accessible on the network, etc.). So, I backed up everything 3 times, including a drive image, and wanted to reinstall XP using the Dell XP SP2 disk.

I removed the Dell Mediacenter partition, but left the first (small) partition. I reformatted the remaining partition as NTFS, and installed XP. Despite the fact that the Dell disk contained the SATA drivers, when I looked in Device Manager, I found that the HD was seen as an IDE drive, and not a SATA drive.

After researching this issue on the Internet, I ended up using the information I found on this site to slipstream the OS from the SP2 disk with the SATA driver. Using nLite, I added the file "iaahci.inf" from the Dell driver R154200. nLite would only let me add this one file, although there was also another called"iastor.inf" in R154200. When nLite asked me which textmode driver to pick, I selected the 2 that had “ICH8m” in their names, i.e, “Intel(R) 82801HEM SATA RAID Controller (Mobile ICH8M-E)” and “Intel(R) 82801HEM/HBM SATA AHCI Controller (Mobile ICH8M-E/m)”.

The installation went smoothly, I added the Dell drivers from the drivers disk, and things seem to be working fine, although I haven't checked all the components. However, I noticed a change in Device Manager. The old Device Manager showed the following information:

,

while the new one shows:



As you can probably tell, there are 2 issues that concern me:

First, there were 2 Primary IDE channels, and now there is only one. Should I be concerned, and, if so, how do I fix it?

Secondly, the first entry used to be "Intel(R) ICH8M 3 port Serial ATA Storage Controller - 2828", and is now "Intel(R) 82801HEM/HBM SATA AHCI Controller". Again, could this be a problem, and how do I fix it?

I have found Intel drivers that seem to be appropriate for the ICH8M 3 port on the Internet, but don't know if I should also include them if I have to do a new slipstream. I must confess that when it comes to chipsets, their drivers, etc., I have a (somewhat intelligent?) monkey-see-monkey-do approach.

Thanks in advance for any help, particularly, as a friend reminded me today of a saying attributed to Confucious:

There are few rewards but many disadvantages to fixing/upgrading a wife's computer​

 

Looks okay here

The most important piece of driver software you need to install is the Chipset and Storage drivers, I'd say.

The primary IDE channel is for the Optical Drive.

 

Thanks, millermagic.

Out of curiosity, do you know why he system would have had 2 Primary IDE Channels?

 

Hi,

The two Primary IDE channels show up if the Sata controller is in IDE mode. Then it behaves like another IDE controller.

If you haven't already done, I'd suggest to install the latest 8.90 driver version from Intel website.

Some additional remarks:
Adding the drivers using Nlite wasn't needed since the Dell XP disc already has the AHCI drivers built-in. The only thing to do after installation would then be to switch the Sata operation mode in Bios setup. Factory setting is IDE.


Michael

 

Now he tells me!!!