Reformat hard drive on dell computer

maltaron

maltaron

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I have a Dell laptop running win7. I want to reformat the hard drive to install XP. When I run the XP install disc the programs load OK but before it gets to the drive select screen the ubiquitous blue screen appears. Any ideas?
TIA
 
What on earth do you want to do that for? It's blue screening because it says Windows XP is old and defunct. On a more helpful note what is the error number that comes up when it blue screens?
 
The reason for doing it is that computer is now unused and I have 2 programs which run on XP but not later, and it will cost several thousands to replace the software which is little used. I will post the error number tomorrow. Thanks for your interest.
 
I am going to guess that your BIOS is set up to use AHCI for hard disk access, and Windows XP does not have the appropriate driver for this. Try going into the BIOS and changing the SATA (hard disk) parameters from AHCI to "Legacy" or "IDE" and then try installing XP again. Alternatively, if you have the AHCI drivers for the motherboard, you can specify then by pressing F6 (IIRC) immediately after booting from the CD.

HTH
 
Download something like virtual pc and run windows xp within windows 7.
 
Thanks for all the interest. For info the error number is: STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF78D663C,0x0000034,0x00000000,0x00000000). I am currently doing a complete hard drive format, when that has finished I will try a clean install, If that fails, I will reinstall win7 and try virtual PC
 
STOP Error 0x7B is "Boot Device Inaccessible". This is almost certainly because the SATA type is set to AHCI, and the driver has not been loaded. See my previous post regarding changing it to IDE (or Legacy). Unless you are installing Win7 from a recovery partition, you will probably find yourself in the same boat with no AHCI driver.
 
Update: the computer has not got IDE or legacy options, but has SATA, ATA, and disabled. Changed to ATA and so far (touch wood) XP install has got as far as formatting drive. Hopefully when this as finished all will be OK
 
Unfortunately Dell do have a habit of changing things like that! SATA probably means AHCI and ATA Legacy/IDE. Please do ensure that you apply Service Pack 3 (Windows XP in its original form was as wobbly as a jelly in a thunderstorm) and, avoid a permanent internet connection. Best of luck!
 
Thanks to all for your help. XP and SP3 loaded OK but no joy with internet explorer, opera worked OK with external Wi-Fi adaptor but drivers for Wi-Fi etc would not load. Have now decided to clean hard drive again, reinstall win 7 and use virtual PC.
 
Hopefully, you got this sorted. Personally, I would suggest the virtual machine route, depending upon the spec of the host laptop and the frequency with which you need to run the software. There are also options to run old software in compatibility mode, but I have never had much luck with that.
 
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