I'm pulling my hair out!!!!

Hello All,

I have Vista Home and XP Home. I've tried everything I can think of to reformat the drive and install XP and absolutely nothing works. As a case in point, I set the BIOS to boot from CD and the XP installation loads, only to tell me that I don't have a hard drive on my laptop (an Asus M51sn - c1). (I also tried to find the sticky about downgrading to XP but I was unable to find it. ) I even did a system restore and I keep getting locked in by Vista.

Is there a straightforward way to make this work?

Thanks,

Nathan

 

In the bios, you have to set your hard drive to compatible mode.

 

What is compatible mode? When I look at the boot devices priority, I see

Hard drive
CD/DVD
Removable Device
Network
Disabled.

I'm missing something here. Can you detail the steps of what I need to do? From what I can see there are several things here, but I have no idea of what they are.

Regards,

Nathan

 

This has something to do with the SATA interface. Vista has drivers preloaded on it but XP does not. You'll need to disable or enable a four letter acronym in the BIOS-- ACHI or something... I don't remember exactly. Try that and if it doesn't work, just re-enable it. No harm done.

Sorry for being so vague :/

 

It's not in your boot device priority. In your bios, go to your IDE configuration. You have it set on "Enhanced Mode" and you need to select "Compatible Mode".

 

Got it. The installation appears to be working. I'll keep you all posted. Thanks very much so far. You guys rock!!

 

Success! XP is up and running. Now, all I need is to download the drivers, install them, and I should be in business. Stay tuned!!

 

Sweet! Glad you got it working

 

If this still helps: there is a link to the drivers for the M51 on the Info Booth (under XP Downgrade Guides)