Hello,

If your bootdisk is on a raidcard you need to load the drivers first before Windows Setup can find the harddrive. When you enter Windows Setup it will ask you to press F2 (if I remember correctly) if you want to load drivers of add-on cards. Press F2, load the drivers of your add-on card and Windows Setup should be able to detect your harddrive.

You must do the F6 driver install for the PERC/CERC card and use the WIN2000 drivers.

Many of the NEW servers have a USB floppy mode that seems to work for this. Dont know if they all work that way.

You do need a floppy drive to 'feed' the OS install the driver. If you didn't purchase the server with a floppy drive, a USB floppy drive might work (not sure tho).

So I tried this, I downloaded the specific file needed and do the F6, and it uploads the file but then I get the same error.... Any ideas?  Can I wipe the whole drive free and then try the install? 

Wipe the drive with WIN98SE and Format Fat32.
Then once windows is loaded and boots fat32 copy the entire XP install cd onto C:\

Then Make an $OEM$ directory and do a sysprep install from C:\I386\WINNT /A
Copying the INF files for the raid into C:\I386 Might work also as you would then press F6 and point to C:\I386

FAT32 is soooo old, use NTFS ;)

Did this solution get adequately resolved in the manner proposed, either with FAT32 or NTFS? What about a thumb drive on a USB port?

Are there any other issues that came up in your experience with the XP + 2850 combo? How about the dual onboard NICs? What driver works for those?

I've got ten 2850 servers on order to act as compute nodes on a number-crunching cluster. Hope it works or I'm going to be real embarassed! Dell officially doesn't support XP on the PowerEdge, but I was told verbally it would work. Can't get it in writing I'll bet.

BTW, there is a "Hot Offers" special this week on the 2850, in the Small Business sub-site. What a deal!


Thanks in advance for any comments....

FAT32 is old. HOWEVER it can be converted to NTFS AFTER THE INSTALL IS COMPLETE.

Everything worked fine upon the installation, my only problem was I was not able to get the network cards to function fully.  I could see everything on the network from the server, but the server was not visible on the network.  I cannot figure it out still.  If you have any ideas, let me know.  Thanks!