Alienware M7700 Windows XP doesn't see harddrive.

Hello everyone. I have an alienware M7700 mobile desktop that doesn't recognize any hard drives. I've tried a few different hard drives (all 2.5" IDE) but no matter what, when I go to install windows XP professional, it does not see any drives to install to. I've replaced the motherboard and graphics card on this notebook and everything other than this seems to be running fine. I've reseated the hard drives several times trying to solve this problem but I just can't seem to get it. The ATA ribbon cable appears fine and has no apparent damage on it, but could this be the problem?

The bios is set to read for a ATA drive, not SATA, but are there more bios settings I need to consider?

Thanks in advance, Eric.

 

You have to have a USB floppy drive that came with the notebook.

If you have the Clevo D900T (Area51 m7700), it is using AHCI... so XP installs/repairs will require SATA drivers from:
- floppy disk (using a USB floppy drive that came with the system)
- or using nLite to slipstream the SATA drivers into a XP CD... so that it will detect the SATA HDDs automatically

 

Good call Gophn. The drivers work in XP install, they just need to be loaded. to do this, look for a dialog (at the bottom) indicating that if you need "3rd party drivers" to press a key... I forget which key as-of right now. gives a good 3-4 second window for they key to be pressed.

When activated, just before loading the dialogs to do the actual install, it will prompt for where the files are located... This can be any USB, harddrive, or diskette drive attached to the system (provided Windows can 'see', or rather, has drivers for, the device).

the alternative is to try to "Slipstream" the drivers directly into the XP install disk using an application like nLite. In my experience, this may, or may not work as-expected, due to the fact that I'm not 100% certain the installer looks at all drivers on the disk... which is to say that it may only load the driver into the install, not during the install. but again, i'm not sure. It's worth a shot.

 

there is no installer for SATA drivers.

(in nLite) just choose the drivers that came with the CD or downloaded on the site.

Create the ISO, burn it, and you are good to go.

 

sATA, ATA, Raid, SCSI, doesn't matter.

the prompt during installation is for 3rd party controllers.

 

the prompt that comes up for XP... requires a floppy drive (USB)

XP does not use any other USB devices (flash drive, external HDD, etc...) to look for the SATA drivers.
.. so if you do not have a USB floppy, then you will HAVE TO slipstream the SATA drivers into your XP CD

then there wont be any prompts needed at all.... just a straightforward XP install.

 

Okay, I guess when I loaded those drivers from the USB stick to my XP install, I was just imagining the whole thing.

No problem.

/goes to Norse wing

 

thats cool if I ever got it to work with XP (while Vista was better with the drivers prompt), but I havent done the F3 thing in a long time... all my installs are all slipstreams for each system I work with.

I might try again for kicks.

 

I do not have the USB floppy drive that came with the notebook. Where can I get these drivers I need to append to the windows XP disk? I checked alienware's website but I wasn't sure which drivers I needed.

 

here are the SATA drivers for the Clevo D900T (aka. Sager 98x0)
http://64.208.175.44/ftp/misc/D900TU_ATA.exe

extract it to a folder, select that folder in nLite when choosing to slipstream the drivers.
_____________

Here are other drivers for that notebook if you are wondering:
http://64.208.175.44/pages/notebooks/download.cfm?ProductType=9890

 

I tried to make a disk with the drivers and I believe I did it correctly, but the problem still persists. Any ideas?

 

I have done it a number of times.

Make sure to slipstream the XP SATA (ATA mode) drivers
- from the file I linked you, extract it to a separate folder
- slipstream the WinXP folder that was extracted

Also slipstream the XP SATA RAID drivers too, just in case if you want to use it later on.
- from the file I linked you, extract it to a separate folder
- slipstream the WinXP folder that was extracted

 

I gave it another shot but the problem still happened. I noticed something else though. When the alienware splash screen appears it will show itself loading and then display this:


That only lasts on screen for about a second and then it goes back to the alienware splash screen which will then load fine. I can get into the bios fine or load a CD installer. Is this talking about the main bios (the one I'm able to get into?) or a SATA device bios that is separate (and possibly causing my problem)?

 

probably contact AW, you probably need a BIOS flash.

 

Thats the RAID BIOS screen, if you are nto using RAID, just ignore or disable that.

 

When I add them to the XP install using nlite, do I need to specify anything during windows installation, such as what drivers to install, or does slipstreaming them onto windows take care of that for me?

I'm little surprised that it's an AHCI issue since I thought Ubuntu would be able to install and get passed that, but the symptoms to seem to point to it.