Dell Dimension E520 Vista to Xp ??

[jaase70]

hi guys , first and formost thanks for the excellent site , keep up the good work
I have been given a dimension e520 Intel Core 2 6300' 1.86 GHz' 1G Ram,256 Mb ATI Radeon x1300 Pro graphics card and want to be rid of vista and install xp pro 64 , after trawling the web and reading lots of conflicting info can anyone please help ?

 

[g-paw]

You should be able to boot off the XP CD, do a full format of the drive and then install XP. Best to get the appropriate drivers off the Dell website and put them on a CD, be easiest way to have them to install once XP is installed

 

[jaase70]

thanks g-paw ,will do as soon as poss , fingers crossed

 

[g-paw]

Let us know how it works. Formatting will wipe everything off the drive/partition you format so if you have any data you want to keep, back it up

 

[mjhp]

Trying to do the same thing for on my mother's E520 and there appears to be some significant incompatibility. Tried many times (with different configurations) to try to load a legal copy of XP Pro onto a new hard drive in this computer and it blue screened every time. Finally gave up and installed XP on the hard drive in another computer then transplanted the drive to the new computer - now it crashes during Windows start up. The drive is fine - it's installed in this computer right now as a second drive. Help is appreciated.

 

[Guest]

You need to remove the RAID support in the BIOS (at the bottom of the Disk Drives section). Then it will all be happy . Hit me back at dviddie@google.com to say thanks

 

[Onliner2]

As the previous poster said, disabling RAID support is the only way to get Windows XP to install or boot properly with this system. I have been trying to setup this E520 for a Vista/XP dual boot for awhile now and I can only get it to actually work properly if I disable the RAID support when not using Vista (you still need to do this even if you are using a seperate HDD for the 2nd OS). As you can imagine, enabling and disabling RAID to boot into the OS of your choice on this system adds up to being a huge pain, it's a real inconvenience for anyone considering an XP installation and I wish Dell would correct this issue.

 

[roland deschain]

You need to remove the RAID support in the BIOS (at the bottom of the Disk Drives section). Then it will all be happy . Hit me back at dviddie@google.com to say thanks

been trying to install xp on this system for 8hours now. used everything i knew to get it going and completely failed. i was able to reinstall vista np. was able to upgrade without an issue but as soon as i tried to downgrade to xp pro i would get as far as the installation screen and no drive would be listed. having disabled raid control i can now install without any issues. thanks for clearing this up. much appreciated. would have been at it for another 8 hours