Problem installing XP on a HDD with Vista on it.

Terry

It loads up, I get to the to set up Windows XP now, press enter.

I press enter only to be told that set up did not find any hard disk drives on your computer.

Make sure blah blah blah

Vista is on it and working, so I have no idea what the deal is here.
Acer Aspire 5100.

yoyo

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Install-Windows-XP-On-SATA-Without-a-Floppy-F6-47807.shtml

You basicly need to create a new XP cd with integrated SATA drivers, guide above shows how, please also note that if you have not managed to find drivers compatible with XP for certain laptop features, they may be unavailable in XP

Nick

Terry

Hmm.
That sounds beyond my capabilities. I've installed XP plenty of times, but I'm far from a pro at this. I just do this type of thing as a hobby.

I just stuck a 2GB usb stick in there and I'm installing XP on that.
I'll see how that works out and get back to this later.

yoyo

Terry wrote: »

Hmm.
That sounds beyond my capabilities. I've installed XP plenty of times, but I'm far from a pro at this. I just do this type of thing as a hobby.

I just stuck a 2GB usb stick in there and I'm installing XP on that.
I'll see how that works out and get back to this later.

The problem is downgrading from Vista to XP isnt that easy as one would expect. Laptop manufacturers generally only provide Vista drivers to download on their website, so in order to find XP ones you need to google and hope tbh . Some important drivers ie chipset ones, or even basics such as webcam, Card reader ones etc may not be available for XP at all, rendering such devices useless (or poor system performance with no chipset drivers). I would reccomend using a app such as Everest to find out all the bits of hardware in the machine, see if you can find XP drivers for each one, and if not, I wouldnt advise downgrading...

Nick

Terry

I've downgraded two or three times before for friends who were not happy with Vista.
Didn't have a problem finding the drivers.

This is a fairly basic notebook anyway, so I'm not anticiparing too many problems.

Ok, copy file phase completed just now. Rebooted and went right onto vista. Damn it. Back to the BIOS.

Edit: Won't boot from the usb drive.
Is there a specific way of booting from it?

I changed the boot sequence so that the usb is the first boot device.

Error message: Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<Windows root>\system32\hal.dll.
Please re-install a copy of the above file.

Overheal

Silly Question: Onto a new Active Primary Partition, right?

Terry

I just deleted the partition, created a new one, making one 8MB one and one 1,950MB one.

I started over and this time used the FAT system instead of NTFS.

Ooh. Just started up and got the system shut down screen. You know the blue one with the If this is the first time you have seen this error thing.
I think I may need to root out at least an 8GB stick.

I'm fairly sure I have a 32GB one somewhere too.

Edit: There's something amiss here. There seems to be two copies of XP on the stick.
Gonna format it on my PC and start over.

yoyo

Terry, Try the solution I mentioned about slip-streaming the XP CD with SATA drivers, its honestly not that difficult , all you need is a bit of patience and a blank CD-R. And it will avoid any usb booting problems which may arise,

Nick

Terry

I don't have any blank CDs. That's one of the main reasons I haven't tried your suggestion.

The nearest 24 hour shop is 5 miles away and I'm slightly drunk.

Terry

Damn it.
I keep getting the same error message.

I'll just try a stick with more capacity.

Overheal

Terry wrote: »

I don't have any blank CDs. That's one of the main reasons I haven't tried your suggestion.

The nearest 24 hour shop is 5 miles away and I'm slightly drunk.

Find a friend, hold hands, skip, ♪ Weeeeeee're Off to see The Wizard....

Terry

Dude, you've seen how fat I am.
I'm not skipping anywhere.

I'll just try again tomorrow. I'm almost there.

Terry

Ok. I got Ubuntu installed on it and tried to install XP over that.
No luck there either. Same message.
I did learn a little bit about OEM. Is there any way to override that?