XP Install disc cannot locate Harddrive

Ryushikaze · Post by **Ryushikaze** » 2008-08-01 08:04pm

Okay, I have a brand new Toshiba laptop, and I want to install XP on it instead of the Vista home it came with, so I put the disc in the tray, and attempt to install it, but it gives me the error message that it can't locate the HDD. I KNOW the HDD is fine, since Vista loads, but XP can't find it. Any clue what's causing this, or how to get around it, or should I just slash and burn and format the C drive and go from there?

generator_g1 · Post by **generator_g1** » 2008-08-01 08:38pm

Is the laptop's hard disk SATA? You might have to NLite the SATA drivers to your XP installation disc for XP to recognize your HD.

Rin · Post by **Rin** » 2008-08-01 08:40pm

HDD controller drivers?

If you do not have custom (for that laptop) XP cd, it might not have correct driver for your HDD controller. And since I really doubt that it has floppy drive (curses for XP not being able to get drivers from USB at install...), you will need to make custom XP cd.

If that is the case, find correct driver from whoever did the controller chip and use (for example) nLite to make new cd. (I did new cd for my laptop to get rid of all crud on original "restore" media...)

atg · Post by **atg** » 2008-08-01 09:36pm

If you don't want to make a new XP disc you can put the drivers on a USB key (or floppy disk if the laptop has one - doubtful I'd imagine, but you could use a usb floppy drive) and during the initial installer setup there should be a promt at the bottom of the screen to "Press xxx to install extra drivers". Note that this doesn't work on all machines as it is dependant on the installer being able to detect and use the USB controller.

darkjedi521 · Post by **darkjedi521** » 2008-08-01 10:38pm

Odds are good the machine has a SATA controller with the BIOS set to Enhanced or AHCI mode. There are three solutions: 1.) Find a USB floppy drive and the driver floppy for your SATA controller (yes, it has to be a floppy and accessible via BIOS floppy calls); 2.) Set the SATA controller to Compatible or IDE mode (sacrifices a little performance) which makes the SATA drive appear the same as any other generic PATA drive, 3.) Figure out how to slipstream the drivers from #1 onto a new XP cd.

Ryushikaze · Post by **Ryushikaze** » 2008-08-06 11:51pm

Unfortunately, it seems there are no XP drivers for this particular laptop, and I've done a lot of searching. That said, I haven't tried to set the drive to compatible mode, but I'll give that a try once I get back home and have access to the provided install disc and a spare computer.