Dell desktop question

[Kyocera]

A friend of mine has a dell and is trying to install a vanilla copy of XP on it. He said he is having some problems, I told him there could be a couple of issues, one - you can't downgrade service pack levels, two - the bios settings for the HD (if he has SATA) may be preventing the install. What's the setting called in a dell bios for the "compatibility mode" equivalent in a thinkpad?

I told him to wipe the drive then try his vanilla XP install.

[teetee]

I remember there is "Normal" and "Combination" mode for SATA drives in Dell optiplex GX280 bios. The combination mode is the same as compatibility mode.

teetee

[Mr. Cloud]

You could also find out the chipset model and download the AHCI drivers from the chipset maker. But if there's no floppy slot, I don't think you can load the drivers anyway unless you want to make a custom install CD and slipstream the drivers in there.

[tfflivemb2]

What problems is he having with the install? I just reinstalled a regular copy of XP Pro onto a Dell Laptop with a SATA drive, and it didn't require any special settings to install XP.

[Kyocera]

He said he is trying to install a retail version of XP over the OEM version, and had some kind of issues but he's not really sure so I was trying to tell him a few things to try. He said there is something in the bios or the MOBO that prevents a retail install on a dell desktop or something. I said I would never buy a computer that locked down an OS install to a particular version nor had I heard of such a thing.