Question Win XP Pro SP3 Install - "Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer" ?

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MC Freak

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Jul 21, 2023
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I've read several threads about this issue, but, unfortunately, none of them seem to have a clear solution.

The machine in question is a circa 2013 Dell Precision M4700 Mobile Workstation (Laptop) that was, until a couple of months ago, running Windows 11. As this machine is now needed to run an old [but powerful] 32-bit media authoring utility that was written exclusively for Win XP, we initially attempted to create a clone copy of the Win 11 OS and the other applications on the machine. Long story short, this started a chain of events that lead to us to basically gut the machine by replacing the main board, the dGPU and the CMOS battery. NOTE: the 4 x 4GB RAM modules and the 256GB SATA III SSD that were working fine in the machine were kept and reinstalled. In addition, the SSD was NTFS formatted to remove all traces of Win 11.

After spending some miserable days trying to revive the machine, we finally managed to get it running to the point where we could pull out our Win XP Pro SP3 x86 installation discs and attempt to install the OS. After the setup process initially loads up quite a few files, we eventually see a blue setup screen that states: "To setup Windows XP now, press ENTER." Unfortunately, immediately after pressing ENTER, we are seeing a blue setup screen that states: "Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer."

Knowing that Win XP does not natively support SSDs, I purposely switched the SATA Operation mode in BIOS from AHCI to ATA (IDE), but we're still getting the same hard disk not found type error. In an effort to remedy this frustrating issue, the system SSD has been removed and reinstalled several times and more than one Win XP Pro SP3 Installation Disc has been employed.

It may be worth noting that the 256GB SSD that was previously home to Win 11 in this machine was slow formatted to NTFS, but it was not partitioned.

If anyone has any ideas about why the Win XP setup utility isn't seeing the Silicone Power (SP) A55 256GB SATA III SSD installed in this machine, I'd be very grateful for any thoughts about this.

Thank you kindly for your time.
 
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I'd pretty much guarantee that XP does not include ANY driver support for hardware that new. Unless you somehow replaced the motherboard with one that was from the XP era, it is incredibly unlikely that XP is going to have any idea what to do with the storage controllers on that board because it simply does not have inbuilt driver support for it. You might be able to slipstream drivers into your XP installation media, but then again, I'd be incredibly doubtful that there even ARE any XP compatible drivers for the onboard hardware on that machine or motherboard.

You best bet might probably have been to simply install and run XP in a VM like Virtual box.
 
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The disk itself doesn't matter, it's the motherboard and the sata controller on it, you have to go to the mobo maker website, difficult for a laptop, and find pre install drivers for XP.
You can also figure out the chipset/sata controller that is used and search for pre install drivers on the net.
It would be a small driver that would fit on a floppy disk and would be read from one, if you don't have floppy you will need to slipstream them as already mentioned.
 
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I've had good luck finding old XP drivers on Dell's support page.


As others have mentioned however, these will only work for you if the MB you have now is an OEM replacement.

You'll want the "Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver".

There's an F6 option at the beginning of the XP setup to add drivers, but the catch is that XP only allows for 3.5 floppy as input. It does not appear that your machine has this drive?

You will need to buy or borrow a 3.5 USB floppy drive to input the needed SATA drivers with the F6 option, or, as others have mentioned create a "slipstream" ISO which merges all the original installation files with the SATA drivers you download.

For a few years now I have preferred to install using a thumb drive instead of a CD. Look for the "nLite" program to create the ISO, and "Yumi" to then create the bootable flash drive.
 
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As I used to build PCs - way back in the day - I was very careful to order Dell OEM parts only. In other words, the Dell 035JKV main board and the nVidia K2000M dGPU board are exactly what Dell installed in this machine when it was shipped back in late-2013.

Considering that it originally came from Dell with one installed, the main board is obviously capable of employing a 256GB SATA III SSD. There's little doubt that the problem is a missing driver of some sort, but we only own the old-style 3.5" floppy disk drives that require the wide IDE ribbon cables. Needless to say, the main board in this Dell laptop doesn't provide that sort of connection, so I suppose it's time to try inserting (slip streaming) the correct driver into an ISO image file via the nLite utility.

Does anyone have any idea where a stand-alone driver file(s) - that will allow AHCI or ATA (IDE) SATA operation in Win XP - might be found? Dell only has an .exe file - that was not intended for Win XP - on their support website.
 
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MC Freak said:
Does anyone have any idea where a stand-alone driver file(s) - that will allow AHCI or ATA (IDE) SATA operation in Win XP - might be found? Dell only has an .exe file - that was not intended for Win XP - on their support website.
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The file: Serial-ATA_Driver_404F9_WN_11.2.0.1006_A02.EXE found on the web site link above is an archive, not an executable. Once extracted however, they add up to about 12MB, so definitely not intended for a 3.5 floppy.

I suggest you use the "Contact Us" link at the top and ask Dell exactly which files you need to complete the setup.
 
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BTW Mr. Freak..... something else just occurred to me. You need to look up how to disable WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) either during the setup, or immediately after install. (it's been a few years since I dealt with this).

This is because XP will nag you to register your copy, but MS doesn't offer the service any longer. So you'll have a time limit (30 days?) on how long the OS you already paid for will function. (cool huh?).
 
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The highly-regarded engineer who practically invented the authoring utility we need has assured us that the utility will only run natively in the x86 Windows XP OS environment. It has something to do with how XML files were processed after Win XP. Regrdless, I'm not really in a position to argue with an engineer who's presently willing to help us. Believe me, we're doing everything we can to keep him working with us.
 
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My recommendation..... Link $90 and you install XP on a computer that was actually meant for it.

Also that 4x4GB kit of ram you left installed..... any 32bit OS will only be able to access about 3.4GB of that. you would be better off installing a 2x2gb kit so you would at least run in dual channel mode.


Like others have said, i would grab any normal desktop and install Oracle VM Virtualbox withl a copy of XP on there, you can allocate as many CPU cores as you want (dependent on cpu used) and then 4GB of ram and try your software on that.

If your still hell bent on using that computer i would try a standard platter hard drive and see if it sees that. If it cant then it is a chipset/sata controller issue .
 
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faalin said:
Also that 4x4GB kit of ram you left installed..... any 32bit OS will only be able to access about 3.4GB of that.
Click to expand...

Guide to enable windows XP to use more than 3.25GB ram​

Guide to enable windows XP to use more than 3.25GB ram

I don't know who to give credits to but the earliest this was found was from a chinese tech forum http://bbs.pediy.com/showthread.php?t=137830 Note: You need not apply this tweak if you are using windows XP SP1 OR you only have 3gb ram to begin with This fix should work on Windows XP SP3, I...
www.xpforums.com
 
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Well, if you have an engineer who authored the software you're needing to use helping you, then it seems like THEY ought to be quite capable of sorting things out for you. It's not like anybody here knows the specific ins and outs of his proprietary software, and he should, so....
 
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ImWolf said:

Guide to enable windows XP to use more than 3.25GB ram​

Guide to enable windows XP to use more than 3.25GB ram

I don't know who to give credits to but the earliest this was found was from a chinese tech forum http://bbs.pediy.com/showthread.php?t=137830 Note: You need not apply this tweak if you are using windows XP SP1 OR you only have 3gb ram to begin with This fix should work on Windows XP SP3, I...
www.xpforums.com
Click to expand...
Not sure if you read through the 2 pages but its about a 50/50 if it works or doesnt/has issues. I am also with one of the posters about installing a 3rd party .exe to trick the OS into running more ram then its suppose to.

There must be a reason he is wanting to install a 32bit OS otherwise just install a 64bit OS and be done with it.

Poster #27 had said it worked for a while but the system has become so buggy he had to remove it. If this is used in a work environment, and it sounds like it is, im sure they are not wanting to have down time or be trouble shooting issues with it.
 
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I think probably the recommendation to simply obtain an XP era machine that can natively run the application is probably the best, and least expensive option for this project if running it in a VM is not possible. You can find those machines extremely cheap, probably even free, using Craigslist or even going to local shops and asking if they have any old systems they simply want to get rid of. I for example probably have five or six XP era machines stacked in the corner of my shop that would easily work for this purpose with the installation of a new, and trustworthy power supply. I wouldn't trust the power supply on any system that old if it's the original or not obviously been replaced within a few years. Even XP era laptops can be sourced for extremely cheap.
 
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faalin said:
Poster #27 had said it worked for a while but the system has become so buggy he had to remove it. If this is used in a work environment, and it sounds like it is, im sure they are not wanting to have down time or be trouble shooting issues with it.
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I had read it in the past, and you're correct, some people did report bugs. On the other hand, I've implemented this PAE 8G "trick" on 2 machines which have been running quite well for 3 or 4 years now.
 
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We're not really "bent" on using any particular machine, we just have certain people (including myself) who really like this particular mobile workstation. It was very expensive and it's built even better than the Mac MBPs that we're used to. It's also very easy to work on - compared to just about any machine (Mac or PC) I've ever worked with - so there's that as well. By the way, the engineer I referred to, who lives abroad, also recommended an actual XP era machine - BUT he's also been very clear that a VM will not work ... but now I'm being repetitive, so I digress. If we can't get our nice workstation to work, we'll start hunting for another machine. Cheers.

EDIT: Any recommendations for a good XP era laptop (must be a laptop) PC?
 
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"Recommendations" on a "good XP era laptop" would be irrelevant, because what's "good" is probably going to be what you can even find that is is good, serviceable condition. And likely, whether batteries are even available for it anymore as I'd assume the point of a mobile system is the ability to use it untethered to an outlet. Quite honestly, you should find a newer, more modern alternative for the software you are trying to run and if there isn't one, then you might want to reconsider whether it's something you actually HAVE to do or not, because basically ANYTHING that is still relevant DOES have a modern alternative to it even though it might mean investing in another piece of software.

Short of that, I'd just try to find a working laptop that meets the criteria, preferably with some kind of guarantee of functionality, with the best specs you can find. Again, battery availability might be very important if the ability to use it in mobile environments is a necessary asset.

Anything we might "recommend" is likely irrelevant because there are slim to zero chances of actually finding a good condition and fully functional machine that matches any "recommendation". See what you can find and go from there.
 
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Your m4700 already is supported for XP, the dell website has all the drivers for it, so you won't be able to do any better.

According to all of this stuff you should download this .cab file extract it with 7zip and find the folder PK44R_A00-00 described as (F6 Driver) find the files inside and slipstream them into a new install cd. (Actually I would slipstream all of the drivers inside this cab)
 
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Well, looks like Terry is right, much as I wouldn't have believed it for a system sold in 2013. There ARE Dell drivers available for XP for both 32 and 64 bit versions. So maybe the version of XP installer you've been trying to use is simply WAY out of date, and you should have been trying to find a version that already included all of the required drivers pre-slipstreamed into it, like, from Dell, since they offer the drivers for it even in 2013? Because I guarantee older versions of XP will NOT have had the required storage controller drivers for a 2013 system. You'd need a version with at least the SP3 service packs and most probably, something direct from Dell if they chose to support XP still by that very late date. Consider, by then, we had already gone through Vista, 7, 8 and were currently on 8.1 so XP was like already 5 years past it's last service pack release and support was already dead except apparently for enterprise OEM clients.
 
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TerryLaze said:
Your m4700 already is supported for XP, the dell website has all the drivers for it, so you won't be able to do any better.

According to all of this stuff you should download this .cab file extract it with 7zip and find the folder PK44R_A00-00 described as (F6 Driver) find the files inside and slipstream them into a new install cd. (Actually I would slipstream all of the drivers inside this cab)
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Cheers @TerryLaze !

Unfortunately, when I click on the links in your last post, all I see are advertisements for new Dell machines. I'm pretty desperate to get what I need to get our Dell Precision M4700 machine running via Win XP Pro SP3 x86, so would you mind checking those links for me?
 
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Getting back to PC basics ... We've now tried two different SSDs in our M4700 - the Silicone Power (SP) A55 SATA III 256GB SSD that used to work with Win 11 (on this machine) and a brand new Samsung 870EVO 1TB SSD. As you will see, via this link, the M4700's BIOS is not detecting either drive. Sure, I haven't set up a PC in over 15 years, but shouldn't BIOS be detecting any installed drive (SSD or not)? I mean, BIOS has no way of knowing which type of OS one intends to install, right?
 
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MC Freak said:
Cheers @TerryLaze !

Unfortunately, when I click on the links in your last post, all I see are advertisements for new Dell machines. I'm pretty desperate to get what I need to get our Dell Precision M4700 machine running via Win XP Pro SP3 x86, so would you mind checking those links for me?
Click to expand...
Dell auto-added add links to the normal links...
Go to the main driver page for the m4700 and search for the
Dell WinPE Driver CAB Pack which is 5Mb ,the other link was just the list of what is in the cab.

This should be it.
 
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MC Freak said:
It may be worth noting that the 256GB SSD that was previously home to Win 11 in this machine was slow formatted to NTFS, but it was not partitioned.
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Well, something is going on that doesn't make any sense. First of all, you can't "format" a drive that has no partitions. You have to create a partition before you can format it. So that bit, ^^^, can't be correct.

You must have a partition table and a partition, in order to format. Formatting happens TO the partition, not the other way around.

I think I might create bootable media for a partition manager like Gparted or Paragon partition manager community (Free) edition, and then remove ALL existing partitions on the drive, then create a single new basic partition. Then after doing that check to see if the drive is now recognized in the BIOS, because if the drive is not being recognized AT ALL in the BIOS, then either the drive is faulty, the storage controller on the motherboard has a problem OR the BIOS lacks support for the drive/controller on the drive because the drive architecture is too new for the storage controller on the board to recognize or understand.

After reading through this thread again I don't see where the current BIOS version has been discussed, or if it has I'm just not seeing it, but at this point if you have not already it would be a very good idea to make sure you have the MOST up to date BIOS version installed.
 
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TerryLaze said:
Dell auto-added add links to the normal links...
Go to the main driver page for the m4700 and search for the
Dell WinPE Driver CAB Pack which is 5Mb ,the other link was just the list of what is in the cab.

This should be it.
Click to expand...
Cheers @TerryLaze ! Unfortunately, Dell is indeed redirecting your links to a page that advertises Dell machines. I will employ your key words in a search field on the Dell support website and let you know what I come up with. Thank you for being so helpful. 👍
 
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