This message is to followup on the installation problem.
There were actually four or five technical issues involved, since beginning this thread:
- 1) Getting a wifi connection on this Dell with XP OS
- 2) MS refusing installation of my XP OS disk.
- 3) Then, after finally installing XP, the computer did not recognize the external hard drive that I was going to use to transfer my files from the the old hard drive to the new hard drive.
- 4) At the moment, I know there was another minor problem, but don't remember at the moment.
- 5) Now, an error message appears during startup, "Diskette drive 0 seek failure. Press F1 to continue, F2 to enter setup." Although the only hassle is to press F1 to continue setup, this is a concern about the bios, I believe.
I found that the problem with the wifi connection was that I installed the incorrect driver for the wifi card. Dell had incorrectly labeled its wifi card as Broadband when it was ASUS. I got a connection with Vista because it the driver was on the installation CD. When replacing the Vista OS with XP, the Dell Vista driver CD did not have the correct driver and got the wrong driver when downloading a Broadband driver. Got the connection with the ASUS driver.
The solution to "2) MS refusing installation of my XP OS disk." I can't remember what the solution was, I tried so many solutions and up all night.
3) I finally got the XP installed and with wifi, thinking my hassles were all over, only to find that the computer would not recognize the external backup hard drive. After much time on this, using device manager, system tools, the wizards, reinstalling the driver, etc, I looked up the Maxtor CD. When installing other hard drives, the Maxtor CDs were useless, with software for earlier OS. With nothing to lose, I installed the software, and found a wizard or something, that I used to format the hard drive. I could then see the external HD on the computer. Before this, I tried formatting it with the Windows, but of course the computer would not see it to format it.
5) Now, an error message appears during startup, "Diskette drive 0 seek failure. Press F1 to continue, F2 to enter setup." I believe this is a concern with bios because I had hit "Load defaults" on one of the latter attempts of installing the hard drives. I had done this as a last resort, when all other solutions had failed. So, now I've got this pesky error message during starting up the computer asking me to press the 1 key. Thes problem could be much worse than it appears, probably creating a hassle if I ever try rolling back the computer to a restore point. And don't know what else it means, software installation problems, etc. I suppose I should post new thread on this. I doubt that Dell is going to help me on this, since my warranty is expired.
Thanks for your attention.
Don N.