Dell XPS partition table problem

Shikhar · 08-10-2008, 09:51 PM

Hi guys,
I have problem with regards to my Dell XPS M1530 which I bought 10 days ago. I got Win Vista Home edition preinstalled. I wanted to install Win XP professional onto another partition. So I tried booting on Win xp pro cd but the problem was that error message stating that HDD not detected came.
Then I tried free partitioning software from www.ptdd.com now when I ran the software from Win Vista error message stating that it cannot be partitioned while on the same partition came up. There 4 things were shown.
FAT16 94.1MB size 8.0MB used 86.1 MB unused Primary
D: Recovery NTFS 10240MB size 5070.2Mb used Primary
C OS NTFS 225579MB size 52316MB used Primary
Other 2559MB size 0.0 used Logical
Then I created a bootable disc of this software.
When that screen came up. I got an error message stating that

Partition Table on harddisk1 error.
1.If you have created a backup file of partition table , please use the file to restore partition table on harddisk1.

2.Otherwise please visit www.partition-tool.com and download Partition Table Doctor. Choose operations>Rebuild Partition Table(RPT) to recover partition automatically.

3.If u don't want to recover partitions on harddisk1 , please choose Operations>Erase MBR.
Warning all partitions on the hard disk will be deleted.

What should I do?? Please somebody help

Scorpion · 09-10-2008, 05:42 PM

Dell XPS comes with 4 partitions - 1 for vista, 2 for recovery, 3 for Media Direct and 4th one a hidden one. Its not possible to make a 5th partition on vista. So, u are pretty much struck without a fresh format and re allocating the drives of ur required sizes.

Or you can use emulators like virtualbox to run Xp on vista without any trouble... like I do.

Shikhar · 09-10-2008, 05:56 PM

I carried on a fresh setup of Win Vista , I formatted my harddisk into 3 partitions C: & D: primary partitions (removed the recovery partition) and left Dell mediadirect one as it is.

After the Win vista setup was complete I restarted my pc and booted it on Win xp cd but again same problem that no HDD is detected. Please power it on etc etc came up.

Please help!!!!!