Windows XP on Dell Inspiron 15

Stratus_ss · Mar 20, 2009

This isn't a driver/compatibility thread but more to see if anyone else has run into this problem. If it's in the wrong area feel free to move it

So I have a corporate lisence from work. Due to some remaining compatibility issues I need XP and not vista. Since I am one of the Techs for my company I got clearance to use one of our coroporate lisences. Anyone familiar with this knows that we tend to make our own images and not use a retail disc.

That said, I stick in our cd which I know works as we use it to deploy around the office. Its one of those minimal interaction ones were you put in the key after the install is dune... basically stick in the cd and forget about it.

So I boot off the cd and the usual "press any key to boot off the cd" pops up which I do. It says "Setup is preparing to inspect your hardware" we all know the spot. Right before the screen turns blue and you can hit f2 to install drivers.

Anyways it won't get passed the black screen. Its as if it is trying to switch but cant. So I burned a new copy of our disc from the image and tried again. No luck. We don't have a retail disc and none of the 4 different images I tried worked. All with the same result

I have 4 linux distros installed so its not a burned cd issue. I called Dell and the guy told me that since I bought it with Vista it would only recognize a Vista cd which is total bunk.

Anyone else have this issue?

UglyChild · Mar 20, 2009

Not to sound like an ***... how did you get this job again, or any of the techs that you work with?

Did you even check to see if there are drivers on Dell site for XP? XP it self wont have drivers for newer hardware.

Trap05 · Mar 20, 2009

XP can't see the HD due to no AHCI drivers. Slipstream the ICH8/9/10 drivers into the install or change the controller to IDE mode in the laptops bios

Stratus_ss · Mar 21, 2009

UglyChild said:
Not to sound like an ***... how did you get this job again, or any of the techs that you work with?

Did you even check to see if there are drivers on Dell site for XP? XP it self wont have drivers for newer hardware.

First of all this is offensive. Just because I may not have an overly large knowledge of windows there is more to the IT world then just windows. For example having my CCNA cert has absolutely nothing to do with windows and is more then relevant thank you very much!

Its not a driver issue you are miss understanding or perhaps I just misunderstand you/windows. Given that it doesnt even get to the blue screen.

As for not finding the hardrive with the Sata drivers I have dealt with this issue before and it is not the same symptoms. If it is a driver problem, for example on a scsi card or raid that needs drivers you always get to the point were you can actually insert the drivers manually. This is litterally sitting at a black screen after booting from the CD.

Further I would like to point out that your comments were not only offensive they are not helpful. I work in a predominately linux shop and that was the reason I was hired. While I may not be a guru there either my skills are more then satisfactory for the job.

I will try Trap's suggestion perhaps that will work. Though I have not had to do that before but this could simply be newer hardware

EDIT: I switched from SATA to IDE mode with the same result just a black screen after booting off the cd

UglyChild · Mar 23, 2009

Offensive??....LOL... ok then. Im sure your boss would love to know that he is paying you for something you cant even accomplish in the first place.

Whats your bosses phone number? I would love to talk to him right away.

Offensive.. heh... thats funny.

Stratus_ss · Mar 23, 2009

UglyChild said:
Offensive??....LOL... ok then. Im sure your boss would love to know that he is paying you for something you cant even accomplish in the first place.

Whats your bosses phone number? I would love to talk to him right away.

Offensive.. heh... thats funny.

I am not sure what you are getting out of putting me down but it certainly is not befitting of someone with so many stars.

I would refer you to a previous comment about being unhelpful but apparently you dont care about that. So instead I would ask you to withdraw from the thread as you have no intention of being remotely decent about your replies.

UglyChild · Mar 24, 2009

Two things.

One. Did you check for drivers? If you do get XP installed, will the hardware work? Hmm...

Two. This is for your own future reference. You are a liability to the company by working on something you are not certified on or qualified, let alone have experience.

I know im being harsh, but its your job and your *** on the line, not mine. Work is not the place to be playing around and experimenting with things that can result in a huge monetary loss.

If this was your home pc/laptop, i couldnt care what you did with it, even if you dressed it up and took it to a tea party.

So you still think im being offensive and unhelpful? If you screw up this laptop, you'll see how offensive your boss will be.

Something to think about.

Having that said.

Your first step should be contacting Dell directly. Call them, join their forums, or send them a love letter. Thats where you should be looking of answers from the get-go.

p.s.

Does your WinXP CD has SP1 or SP2? If not, then you should slipstream it. But do contact Dell first thing, that is your priority as an employee of a company. But before you change an entire OS, you should look in to in order to find a resolution with what ever it is you are having compatibility issues with, there could be a simple solution to your problems. Vista is a mature OS compared to a year ago.

Once again, contact who ever it is made that software of a hardware directly, depending what the issue you are having.

And in the future, please dont wave your certificates around, we all have them and they dont mean much, it only makes you and i look like an ***. Real world, life, experience is what counts here or any where.

Stratus_ss · Mar 24, 2009

UglyChild said:
Two things.

One. Did you check for drivers? If you do get XP installed, will the hardware work? Hmm...

Two. This is for your own future reference. You are a liability to the company by working on something you are not certified on or qualified, let alone have experience.

I know im being harsh, but its your job and your *** on the line, not mine. Work is not the place to be playing around and experimenting with things that can result in a huge monetary loss.

If this was your home pc/laptop, i couldnt care what you did with it, even if you dressed it up and took it to a tea party.

So you still think im being offensive and unhelpful? If you screw up this laptop, you'll see how offensive your boss will be.

Something to think about.

Having that said.

Your first step should be contacting Dell directly. Call them, join their forums, or send them a love letter. Thats where you should be looking of answers from the get-go.

p.s.

Does your WinXP CD has SP1 or SP2? If not, then you should slipstream it. But do contact Dell first thing, that is your priority as an employee of a company. But before you change an entire OS, you should look in to in order to find a resolution with what ever it is you are having compatibility issues with, there could be a simple solution to your problems. Vista is a mature OS compared to a year ago.

Once again, contact who ever it is made that software of a hardware directly, depending what the issue you are having.

And in the future, please dont wave your certificates around, we all have them and they dont mean much, it only makes you and i look like an ***. Real world, life, experience is what counts here or any where.

First, yes there are drivers I did look.
Second, It is a personal laptop. The tech department is allowed to use their own personal laptop.
Third as I said in the original post I called Dell and they gave me some BS answer about the laptop only being able to recognize Vista system discs (which was proven wrong by installing several linux distro's and Windows 7. As I said in the original post this is NOT a driver/compatibility thread. I wanted to know if anyone else has run into this problem of a computer going blank trying to boot off a disc. It is a slipstream disc with service pack 3.

I am sorry if you felt I was waving certs around. The purpose of that was simply to point out there are plenty of functions in the IT world that do not require extensive Windows knowledge out of the 200 computers I support 30 of them run Windows, usually I can handle any of the issues that they run into and when I can't it gets bumped up to the guy that can.

UglyChild · Mar 24, 2009

Then try disk with SP1 or SP2.

Trap05 · Mar 24, 2009

Can you just install XP in a VM or do you actually need it as the main OS?

Stratus_ss · Mar 24, 2009

A virtual machine would work and that's how it was being done before.
However, since we are in the midst of changing architectures away from RPM based the thought was that installing it as a standalone would solve the problem of migrating the VM if/when the switch does take place

medo145 · Mar 24, 2009

Do you have an external cd/dvd at your disposal? If so try to install it from there.

Stratus_ss · Mar 24, 2009

medo145 said:
Do you have an external cd/dvd at your disposal? If so try to install it from there.

Ah good idea. I will give that a shot sometime in the next few days

polarys425 · Mar 24, 2009

Good luck. I spent a couple days trying to install XP on an HP laptop not long ago. It would not install. When it got to the point your getting to, it would blue screen. I have install disks with just about every integrated driver you can think of, didnt help. Tried different ram, opticals, removing wireless card, and anything else that could be removed. I even tried test installs on other computers with the same/similar chipsets, then moving the drive to the laptop, only for it to blue screen.

I may be wrong, but i have a feeling we're going to see more of this as a way to force people to vista.

THE JEW (RaVeN) · Mar 24, 2009

If the device is new enough, you may also want to try a USB drive install:

http://kurtsh.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!DA410C7F7E038D!1665.entry
http://www.pctipsbox.com/installing-windows-xp-using-a-usb-flash-drive/

These are just a couple off the first Google search I did. The frontpage had an article on how to do Windows 7 off a drive. Formatting to NTFS as opposed to FAT on the drive using HP's program first is advised.

Easy way to make a bootable USB drive?
Boot Ubuntu 8.10 cd, click System>Administration>Create a USB startup disk.

As an aside:
Easy way to make hardware fixing USB drive?
http://florian.freundt.org/blog/?p=161

If ya ever get time to stop watching Imax movies for free, gimme a shout. We can drain a beer and bash computer parts together sometime. We do live in the same city, after all

Have a good one.

Stratus_ss · Mar 25, 2009

THE JEW (RaVeN) said:
If the device is new enough, you may also want to try a USB drive install:

http://kurtsh.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!DA410C7F7E038D!1665.entry
http://www.pctipsbox.com/installing-windows-xp-using-a-usb-flash-drive/

These are just a couple off the first Google search I did. The frontpage had an article on how to do Windows 7 off a drive. Formatting to NTFS as opposed to FAT on the drive using HP's program first is advised.

Easy way to make a bootable USB drive?
Boot Ubuntu 8.10 cd, click System>Administration>Create a USB startup disk.

As an aside:
Easy way to make hardware fixing USB drive?
http://florian.freundt.org/blog/?p=161

If ya ever get time to stop watching Imax movies for free, gimme a shout. We can drain a beer and bash computer parts together sometime. We do live in the same city, after all

Have a good one.

I might give the usb thing a shot and see if that works. Or i might just give up.
About the beer, I asked LordKal for your number but he keeps forgetting to send it to me. Mabye you can PM me it.

abhijeet_js · Mar 30, 2009

Stratus_ss said:
I might give the usb thing a shot and see if that works. Or i might just give up.
About the beer, I asked LordKal for your number but he keeps forgetting to send it to me. Mabye you can PM me it.

Hi!
I had a similar problem previously with a Compaq/Dell Laptop.The screen used to go blank when booting from CD. But then i found that, after waiting for a long time when booting WinXP cd, it finally booted & directly displayed the blue screen (that shows the option of Recovery Console, Installing XP. etc). It didn't displayed the usual boot up screens that shows the loading of drivers & all.
Have u tried waiting for some time (say about 5 min.).Just give it a try.
If u r able to solve the problem, please let me know the solution.

Old Thrashbarg · Mar 30, 2009

Anyone familiar with this knows that we tend to make our own images and not use a retail disc.

Depending on what has been done to the image, it could be a result of that. Can you get ahold of a disc that you know for sure is unmodified?

It's somewhat unlikely in this particular case, but there's also the possibility that XP doesn't like the existing MBR/partition table... Might be worth trying fixmbr or if you don't need the recovery partition, just delete the existing partitions and start anew.

Also, like abhijeet_js said, on some machines it does just take awhile for whatever reason... leave it for 15 minutes or so and see what happens.

Stratus_ss · Apr 16, 2009

Directly related to the laptop issue, a desktop had the same issues. Since we weren't doing a dual boot on the desktop I booted a gentoo minimal disk and wrote zeros to the hard drive, rebooted and this time the cd worked.

So if anyone reading this has a similar problem, the cause could be an issue with the hard drive as it was with the Dell Precision 670. I have not tried this solution on the laptop as it has data on it as well as a few other OS's that I dont want to format at the present time

art_yu · Aug 24, 2009

Problem installing Win XP to Dell Inspiron

I experience a different problem trying to down grade to XP in my Dell Insperon with Vista. I try to boot with a Window XP CD from my other Dell system. After all the drivers are copied and go to start Window it comes back with a blue screen saying system stop because it detected defective hardware or software.

I took out the Inspiron's HD, reformat it and installed Window XP on another system. Put it back to the Inspiron and see if it will work. As soon as it gets to starting window the same blue screen came back.

Anyone has any idea why. I installed XP to other laptop without any problem.

Windows XP on Dell Inspiron 15

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