Last week I had to rebuild a Dell Dimension 9150 with an SATA hard drive and when I tried to install Windows XP I received an error saying txtsetup.oem not found when I tried to provide the drivers on a USB floppy drive. I searched for a while and found nothing terribly helpful so I contacted Dell via phone and chat (sat on hold on both – chat answered quicker). Via chat they were able to solve my problem as follows:

1. Reboot and hit F2 on the Dell screen\
2. Go to the SATA Operation section\
3. Change to Combination SATA/PATA mode.\
4. Reboot and re-attempt windows install

Windows XP was then able to see the drive without my having to use a floppy drive and F6 to specify/provide the drivers.

[categories: dell;SATA]