Help Needed!

Hey guys, this is my first post because i though i could find some help here. I have an inspiron 1720 that came with vista home prm. i wanted to format it so i could put xp on it but that wouldnt even go past the first step after it asked me if i wanted to do repair console or fresh installation (i did boot from cd) i then tried putting vista on it again because it was acting very slow (this is why i wanted to put xp on there, i was afraid the ram may not have been enough. but after installation when it was time to finish up after installing updates. it would give me an error that said disk could not be found or something like that. and it basically reboooted itself. when it did this it asked how i wanted to boot (safe mode, last know good config...) i chose safe mode, last know config, and normall but id get this blue screen that flashed real quickly and went away and the comp rebooted. the flash wasnt even a second long and this is what has been happening i ran some diagnostics and there was nothing wrong with the ram or anthing else so i wad convinced it was the HD and bought another one i still am having the same problem only i remembered something else that i could try, that works. when i take the ram and cmos battery out of the back everything works fine. but when it's shut off i have to repeat the same steps i keep it on as much as possible so i can keep cmos flash or w/e to a minimum cause i hear it's not too good of a thing to do.

Any help would be appreciated.
thanks

 

I got a similar thing as you do before and it turned out that it's because of my SATA driver. So you may trying installing the SATA driver to solve the problem.
(As I am not a pro., I can't help you about how to install the SATA driver. Sorry.)

The thing I did: put my Vista Ultimate installation disc->boot from the disc->system restore->once I got into Windows, I installed the SATA driver immediately->reboot->It became normal once again!

 

you need this

 

yeh that definitely is what i need...i know that i dont have raid or scsiand on top of that none of what was listed complied with my system. here are my specs.

core 2 duo t7300
2gb ram
8600mgt
wireless 1390
bluetooth
160gb

 

if anyone had a blue screen problem on a dell where it would flash for not even a second please let me know what you did to fix it

 

People get this problem when they reinstall Windows from a non-Dell CD. Like Alexzeon said, you need the SATA or the AHCI drivers if you're going to use AHCI. It might work to disable AHCI in the BIOS and just use ATA and then you won't need the AHCI. Or maybe I'm misremembering or misunderstood what I read. Do a search for AHCI and some of the threads that come up should have info that will help you.