Special Considerations for Dimension 8400 and XPS Gen 3 (and later)

The Dimension 8400 and XPS Gen 3 (and Precision Workstation 370) may be configured with a RAID hard disk system.  If so, a special driver is required.  During the installation of Windows XP the second screen displayed shows the following:

At this point the user should press F6 to install the driver.   The instructions for creating and using the driver on floppy diskette are here.

Users who do not have a RAID disk system may see an error message during installation indicating that there are no hard drives present in the system.   If this occurs a change in the BIOS is required.   Restart the system and press F2 to enter the system bios.  In the main bios screen scroll down to drives and press <Enter> or + to expand the drive menu then scroll down to "SATA Operation" and press <Enter>.  Change the SATA operation mode to "RAID Auto/ATA" press ESC to save and exit the bios.  After making this change, Windows XP should install without a problem.