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A couple of days ago I messed up the windows registry and now my pc is totally unbootable. I cannot even reinstall win XP, since the SATA drive is not detected.
I would like to install a second SATA hard drive and try to access the old hd from there, but I suspect I will nee to install SATA driver for that one too. My question is, how do you install the SATA drivers since the hd is not accessible. I have set up BIOS to boot from the Resource CD in CDROM, but it required something like the hd drivers in a floppy disk.
Thanks again for the help.
How about attaching an IDE HDD temorarily?
Seems a little convoluted but if you get into the machine you're on the way!
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Will the second SATA harddrive remain installed in that computer? In order to recover any personal data you will need to install WinXP on the second drive.
Did this computer come from Dell with WinXP installed? If so, the restore disks should have the correct drivers for the SATA drive on the disks.
Clarify what you are working with for further help.
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Yes, the second hard drive will remain as the primary hard disk with the OS installed in it.
I have the restore CD and the original win xp cd, but I could not manage to access the HD driver from the resource CD.
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If the computer came with that harddrive then you shouldn't need to install any SATA drivers. They should be part of the restore CD.
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Thanks everyone for helping.
No, i do not have a floppy drive.
So far, I had no luck with installing SATA drivers from the restore CD. I downloaded new driver from Dell's website, but again it requires floppy drive to install.I have ordered a new SATA hard drive online and I'll try to install it this alone with its new driver. I have also found out that there is this RAID option, which makes things even more complicated.
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Are you performing the system restore as per Dell instructions? I can't believe the restore disk doesn't have the SATA drivers integrated.
A new SATA harddrive isn't going to make things any different. Actually may make things worse. If you have a hidden partition on the existing drive that contains some restore files you will no longer have access to those file if you replace the original drive.
How are you attempting to restore?
You don't need RAID. Have you gone into the BIOS screens and made changes?
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