Formating S7020D Help

Hi all,

I have just recieved my Fujitsu S7020D. It looks to be a very nice laptop. There is one thing I am having trouble with. I want to format and re-install windows XP. However, whenever I try to boot from the CD, it can't detect any hard drives (because it is a SATA drive). Then I went to fujitsu's website and downloaded the SATA drivers. However, I ran into another problem. The laptop does NOT come with a Floppy drive, and I don't have the add-on one. Whenever I run Windows XP setup, and press F6 to load third party drivers, it says no Floppy drive was found, so i can either exit setup or continue without installing additional drivers. Seems like I am in a Catch-22, and I don't know what to do. I was hoping to be able to install those third party drivers from a burned CD. Is that at all possible? If not, is there anything else I can do, short of not formating or buying a floppy drive. Thanks.

SuperG

 

Blame Microsoft, I just ran into the identical problem installing Server 2003 on one of our web servers. Fujitsu machiens come very celan though, why go through that trouble at all?

 

I ordered my Fujitsu S7020D and can't wait to get it. Does it have any keyboard flex? One review of the S7010 noted the bottom row flexed. I was wondering, did you get the SXGA model? If so, is it a nice resolution? I hear its thicker than the XGA version, 1" vs. 1.3"?


Anyway, with your problem, could you load the drivers onto a USB thumb drive? I know some, it not all, thumbdrives are bootable, so it might work. When it asks you to load third party drivers, what options does it give you? Just load from floppy, or load from removeable device, or load from CD-ROM too?

 

Don't know if this will help or not, but we ran into a problem similar to your first one on a desktop with a SATA drive. The system had gotten hosed and we were tryying to do a repair, but the xp CD couldn't see the drive.

After scratching our heads (and other body parts) we stumbled upon some entries in the BIOS for the HDD. We had to change the controller type to something with an ATA mode. The CD then recognized the drive and we could do the repair. We then set the BIOS entry back to its SATA default and rebooted and all was well.

Harvey

 

Hello!

Use nLite ( http://www.nliteos.com/download.html)) to add the downloaded driver to your Windows CD, then boot and let Windows find the driver by itself.

I did that to my Windows SBS 2003 CD so that I wouldn't need to have the Adaptec SCSI adapter floppy handy. I also tweaked some settings (start menu speed, etc).

Where do you live that you already received your S7020? Is it from Fujitsu or Fujitsu-Siemens? Here in Estonia no-one even sells them yet. Can't pre-order, even no prices are set yet.

HTH,
Henno

 

I agree that Fujitsu seems to have the least useless crap pre-loaded out of most, but if at all possible, I would still like to be able to format it. I am very set in my ways of certain things, and would like to be able to setup my laptop like that.

henno,

I will have to check that out. I am always weary though, of software that try to integrate drivers into software like that. I seem to think it will corrupt and cause problems later, even if the initial install goes fine.

Also, I am in the US, and ordered the S7020D from http://www.portableone.com

SuperG

 

Did you ever figure out how to format and re-install XP? Are you using XP SP2? I've read that XP SP2 should have a generic SATA driver.