xp installation problems on M140

I've got M140 yesterday and tried to install xp pro.
After pressing F12 at dell logo and then choosing Cd-rom for booting, it is forzen in the blue setup screen with the following message
'A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.
Technical information
xxx stop:0x0000007E
xxx pci. sys - address F85480BF base at F8541000, datestamp 3b7d855c.'

What would you think the problem is?
Any comments will be appreciated.

 

Instead of hitting F12, try hitting F2. You can change it to the CD disk, and see if that works. If it does, then once the clean install is done, you can change it back to booting up on the harddrive.

 

No, it doesn't work either.
In the blue setup screen, after the message('setup is starting windows') appears, I have the error message mentioned above.

 

Are you using the XP disk you got from dell or do you have your own?

 

I got something like that too when I tried it on mine. I have an XP Pro disk from a previous Dell (DELL OEM CD) and tried to do a clean install with it...no dice. Had to use the Home disk that came with my M140.

 

I used my own xp pro CD.
So, I decided to test whether there is a problem in my CD. I put it into my friend's dell laptop (D810) and booted. It did work. Does it mean my new m140 has problems?
Last night, I talked to one of dell support persons, he didn't figure it out. He just said he's gonna send me a xp installation CD.

 

hhmm in one of my notebook which has Dell OEM XP CD, I can install XP Pro (retail).
The stop error that is mentioned above refers to pci.sys which is a device driver.
I suggest to run the Dell Diagnotic Utility. I suspect it is a problem with memory card. Still running Diagnostic Utility will help to determine the culprit.

 

I know this is an ancient thread, but this is exactly the same problem I have been wrestling with for about a month now.

The system in question: my Dell XPS M140, 80Gb hard drive and 1Gb RAM. Bone stock - no dual boot partitions, system drives, additions or deletions to the hardware configuration, nada. Exactly as Dell sent it to me from assembly in Malaysia.

Problem was preceded by my HD failing to boot the system. It returned a "win/sys32/config.sys is corrupt or missing" error from the 2d partition. (of course, XP doesn't use a 'config.sys' per se, so I don't understand the msg).

Figuring it to be disc failure, I pulled the HD, put a clean one in and partitioned it. Popped my XP install disc into the drive and fired it up. THEN it displays the exact same error as the first poster in this thread described.

I backed off and ran some diagnostics on the board, memory, etc. All good. Got a can of compressed air, pulled some panels off and blew out the interior. Cleaned the memory pins and inspected the sockets. I updated the BIOS to A04 (from A02) and returned all the BIOS settings to factory default. I popped the original 80Gb hard drive into an enclosure and connected it to another system, ran a virus scan and checked the physical properties of the drive (files are still there, all properties good to go).

Still won't boot with either hard drive or the install disc. Safe mode will not load it. I can't access system restore unless I can boot windows. And I do not have a repair recovery disc.

So I've expended my limited toolbox of tricks to get the system up and running. My next thought is to buy the Dell system restore disc if I can find one somewhere and see if that helps.

HELP!

 

Anyone? This thing is a five pound paper weight.

Thanks in advance!

 

Hey Guys:

Ran into the same problem myself.

Should be able to fix it with a simple BIOS tweak:

Boot the machine and hit F2 immediately to get into the BIOS.

Goto "Drives" -> "SATA Operation"

Change the setting to "RAID/ATA Autodetect" (or something similar).

Reboot from the XP install CD. Should work.