Dell Mini9 boots only in safe-mode

Hey.. I have a purchased copy of Win XP Pro that I wanted to install on my mini9. After installation, it won't boot. After selecting the OS from the OS selection screen, the system reboots itself. However, safe-mode works just fine. The System log says to look at the setuperr.log file, because non-fatal errors occured during setup. The log showed me about 10 files whose signiture couldn't be verified, and also couldn't be restored. It suggests running SFP utility, but it won't run without the RPC server, which doesn't start in safe-mode.

Maybe related: During the install, a window kept popping up saying that it coudn't find files on the CD drive. It kept pre-populating the field as such: "CdRom0/somefile.dll ". I would wipe over this and make it "d:\somefile.dll ", and it was happy with that. I've never seen that before in 15 years in the IT fiield. I wonder if a similar problem is plaguing the OS. The paths written into the registry won't let the machine boot somehow? Then again, why does safe-mode work, and "boot normally" causes a reboot after the initial drivers load (the one that lists drivers like io.sys, usb.sys, atapi.sys etc etc..



I bricked my mini! What's the proper method for re-installing the XP OS on the mini?

 

I read thru those articles - they seem to deal with a.)using a thumb drive with XP's i386 directory on it, in case you don't have an optical drive or b.)people who needed to locate the proper Dell drivers for NIC, vid, snd, etc etc...

None of that applies here. I can certainly try the published methods to get my XPpro CD onto a thumb-drive, and try it that way, if anyone thinks it makes a difference.

What I was wondering about, was whether you had to do a pre-install preparation (like pre-formatting the drive) before installation or something. --Maybe related to the fact that the 'disk' is solid-state instead of a traditional drive.

It smells like XP doesn't have a proper disk controller driver, but then again XP *did* find a disk to install on, and it does boot in safe-mode, but not in normal mode. Weird - We've all seen, "XP Install could not find a fixed disk in your computer; please press F3 to exit.." The dell site didn't have a disk controller driver listed for the Mini. From the specs, I see the flash drive is PATA (Paralell) I thought that would be "nice and compatable "...

 

I've got postings on the CommunityForums on Dell's site, as well as DSLreports. I've got 'chipset' drivers for the Mini9, but I'd installed nothing yet, since I thought something was severely broken.

I have another computer that had an "NVidia Network" adaptor. I thought that was strange, until I realized I had an NVidia chipset motherboard. Apparently the NIC's functions are handled not by a dedicated controller, but apparently by the chipset. Once I found the proper driver, the NIC worked fine.

Maybe all I have to do is install the Chipset drivers, and the controller driver for the solid-state drive is included...? (Can you even install *anything* in safe-mode)? I've never tried.

I'll report back anything interesting I learn on my journey...