Installing XP on a new 1525

Hey hey guys,
I recently bought a new Dell 1525 and thought that I'd be able to remove the Vista and replace it with XP without any major problems, Dell thought otherwise and ****ed me over.

When I try to install XP (tried with 3 diffrent CDs) it says that it can't find the HDD and that I need some sort of driver to remove the block/to be able to see the HDD.

Any ideas, please? ^^

Thanks,
Talle

 

Hi...
Have you tried booting from the windows xp cd and formatting your hard drive?

 

It sounds like you need to slipstream the SATA drivers to your XP SP2 disk. I don't know exactly how to do that; someone else here probably does. The Windows forum for sure would tell you how.

It's not Dell that's causing you problems; it's a Microsoft oversight in SP2. Hopefully they'll get it fixed in SP3.

You should be able to install with a XP SP0, SP1, or Dell OEM SP2 disk with no problem. If my guess is correct, you've been using non-(Dell OEM), Service Pack Two disks.

 

I tried that with 3 diffrent CDs, none of them can find the HDD correctly.

 

Right you are, it's not really Dell CDs I've been using, I'll see if I can get my hands on a dell Cd with XP so I can try it out.
About the Slipstream thingy, I hope I don't have to do that, I heard there were some stuff you could change/deactivate in BIOS to get it to work aswell. Got some tips from a coworker so I'll try those out when I get home.

Thanks for the answers!

If someone knows how to make a slipstream disc, please let me know, it never hurts to have backup plans!

Thanks,
Talle

 

A man
i just bought 1 of them and downgrading from vista.i found 2 ways 2 do so.
if u have a usb floopy just upload the drivers 2 a disk and press F6 when u start 2 install Xp.
second 1 is just use nlite and adding there your sata drivers which u can find on dell page, i used the second 1
the big issue after u install xp is 2 find all the drivers 4 win xp.im down to 2 yellow marks on my device manger.
there is some explions on the web ,google it.
good luck.

 

Quite easy to slipstream the drivers.

Grab nLite as Evilmush said
http://www.nliteos.com/

Browse the Dell site for the XP SATA drivers for your particular laptop. Extract the files to somewhere.

Running through nLite is pretty straightforwards. Can add in nifty tweaks, like pre-configuring WinXP (Theme, colours, already has serial entered so you don't have to do it yourself, etc etc), but can get a little confusing. The best thing though is you've got a WinXP install CD ready for the future, if you ever decide to reinstall it onto your laptop.

 

hey
can u tell me the way to link SATA driver
i donthave USB disk with me and all i have is the single setup file for xp
when i try browsing for the file in nlite, it says that the folder does not contain any i386 files
can anyone help out in this regard ?

mail me @ [email protected] as i wont be checking this forum most frequently and i am in very bad need of getting xp installed in my 1525
Thanks in advance

Regards
Savio

 

Woah ... it's not that complicated. It should be a setting in the BIOS called SATA Compatability mode. I'm not sure as to what it is called exactly, as I have done this on quite a few laptops, but its a simple setting in the BIOS.

 

I know from reading on here and doing some reserach on re-installing a 64bit version of Windows is this. When you go to install windows you have to click a prompt to load the sata drivers before actually loading windows itself or you will screw yourself and end up with a nonworking windows load. I'm not sure if it is the same with XP, but I'm sure if you do some searching on this site alone you can find a way to fix it.

 

In Vista you could easily load the drivers via a USB flash drive, but under XP thats not supported and only via floppy disk. Unfortunately it is actually quite tricky to get a USB floppy drive to work (from what I ve found).

The 2 options would be to change the SATA modes in the BIOS or slipstream the drivers.