Error Installing Win XP on Dell Dimension 9100

V1NNY

Hi all

Hope some one can help me with my problem. I have just purchased a dell Dimension 9100 without an operating system installed & have tried to install Windows XP Pro (retail) on it, without any success. It fails with the error message below during the text part of the install (basically before copying any files to the hard disk).

Has anyone any suggestions as to what I should do to resolve this problem?

The error message I get is:

A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to protect your system.

STOP : 0x0000007E (0xC0000005, 0xF786B0BF, 0xF7CB7208, 0xF7CB6F08)

pci.sys - Address F786B0BF base at F7864000, DateStamp 3b7d855c

The last message displayed on the screen before the error message is 'Starting Windows'.

Running 'Hard Drive Diagnostics' shows:

Drive 0: WDC WD................ - PASS
Drive 1: No Device
Drive 2: No Device
Drive 3: No Device
Drive 4: TSSTcorpDVD-ROM TS-H352C - Diagnostics not supported
Drive 5: SONY CD-RW CRX217E - Diagnostics not supported

Any help would be greatly appreciated

(I asked for advice on the Dell community forums yesterday, but no replys as of yet )

Browntoa

it does'nt still have the dell restore partition on it ??

Ctrl+F11 on boot up accesses this ??

woo

Could be an issue with the memory try and test it - https://www.memtest86.com

Chippy_Minton

See http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;330182

and this thread --> http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic16553.html and other Google for "pci.sys windows xp install"

V1NNY

Thanks guys for all your help.

Chippy_Minton, thanks for the techspot ink, it worked a treat

Here is the fix to install Win XP on a dell machine, should anyone ever need it in future:

On a reformatted Dell machine (or one without an operating system installed) you will need to use a Windows XP disk with Service pack 2 already on it. If you do not have one with Service pack 2, then you will need to do something called Slipstreaming (to create a Win XP slipstreamed disk), more info can be found HERE

(Slipstreaming can not be done on a computer running Windows 2000, Service pack 4........something I found out the hard way)

With the slipstreamed CD you will get past the error message posted above, but I then encountered a message saying that a hard drive cannot be found....

So reboot & press F2 to enter setup & select drives & ensure that "Drive 0: SATA-0" drive is set to "ON"

Then go to "SATA Operation" & change the setting to "Combination". It will probably be set to "RAID Autodetect / AHCI"

Lastly in Bios ensure that the boot sequence is set to CD rom before hard drive. Now you should have no problems in installing XP on your machine with the slipstreamed CD