Dell Vostro 400, Intel Core2 Duo E6750 (2.66GHz, 1333FSB, 4MB L2
3GB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHZ 2X1GB+2X512MB
250GB Serial ATA Hard Drive 7200RPM, 8MB Cache
128MB NVIDIA GeForce 8300GS DVI/VGA
Windows Vista Basic System
just bought this system recently and installed Vista's works fine.
tried to install rhel-5[1].1-server-i386.
tried to install , after the first step of prompting to install in Graphics mode or text, it gets stuck on:
"Loading SCSI drivers"
"loading ata_piix driver..." and it prints 4 lines of unprintable chars
how to resolve this

Are you trying to install rhel-5[1].1-server-i386 as a VMWare Server VM?

If so there is a fix at the following address.

howtoforge.com/vmware-server-1.04-guest-fix

TiMM...

Not sure if this is a VMWare problem, I haven't got that far.

I also have a new Vostro 400 with two SATA drives and can't install RHEL, Fedora, or Mandriva due to above issue ("Loading SCSI drivers" "loading ata_piix driver..."). It gets to this point and stops. I managed to install Ubuntu but it's not 100%. This machine came with XP which works fine, but that's by-the-by.

I'm in contact with Dell trying to work out what the problem is exactly (no driver I guess) and what to do about it. If the bios supports it (this model doesn't) you can change from SATA to AHCI and I believe that solves the problem.

David

I fixed mine by using h/w RAID, which changes the required driver to AHCI. So instead of having two 500GB drives and lots of space but no OS, I'm back to 500GB RAID 1 with RHEL 5.1.

David

at the linux boot prompt, try booting with the 'irqpoll' option
include cmd line options like "linux irqpoll"

Interesting development: since I changed over to RAID, I can't get access to the BIOS. F2 and F12 don't work (in fact, nothing works until it gets to the RAID config screen). I still need to look into that. If I manage to get back to non-RAID, I'll try your suggestion, thanks.

I also just bought a dell vostro 400 and am having trouble installing Fedora Core 8. My BIOS is v1.0.11.
Here is the error I am getting:

isolinux: disk error 80 ax=4293, drive 9f
boot failed: press a key to retry

Pressing any key reboots the machine and repeats with the same error.

Can I install FC8 using a USB key?

Has anyone had any luck with dell vostro 400?

Thanks!
ukon

I ended up installing Ubuntu 7.10 Server. So far everything works like a charm!

I would reccomend giving slack ware or CentOS a try as they are both more aimed at advanced situations such as yours!! :P:P

I installed trixbox, a linux distribution to set up an asterisk server and ran into the same problem. I can't get access to the BIOS. Did you solve this issue?

I never resolved these issues to my satisfaction, and ended up sending the box back to Dell for a refund. They had no solutions.

I see this is a old forum, but it never was truly answered...

I also have a dell vostro 400

the bug is related to http://bugs.centos.org/view.php?id=2143

A work around solution

Hold F2 to bring up the bios under "Integrated Peripherals" look for SATA Mode switch this to RAID from IDE

reboot

this will skip the scsi driver and continue with installation running...

I have CentOs5.4 installed and I have Windows XP installed, unfortuentely I cannot run both of them quickly for I have to go into the bios and switch this every reboot that I want to switch systems

It is a pain, but it does work

If someone knows a way to make it work that would be great... but this would at least temporiarly solve the problems described in the thread