Switching to XP from Vista - Hard Drive not recognized (T61)

Hi Everyone,

I'm not exactly a hater of Vista, but my laptop is primarily for school... and having to wait a while for Vista to start cuts into valuable class time. I've been trying to switch to XP but I'm running into a problem where the computer won't recognize the hard drive. Everytime I'm booting windows from the CD, it says it can't continue because there's no hard drive... yet this is a brand new laptop, I don't think I should be having any problems. I have things saved currently on my laptop while using Vista. Can anyone tell me what the issue is and how I can fix this?

Thank you!

 

Setting the hard drive to compatible mode in the BIOS should fix that.

 

In BIOS, go to Config, set the SATA option to Compatibility Mode instead of AHCI mode.

After Windows installs, follow the directions for the Intel Storage Matrix Driver, or use the F6 method before. (I think the former is easier).
Which you can find here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=2446301#post2446301

 

What is the difference between these 2 modes and what are the benefits of either?

 

the AHCI mode is faster, i think. more throughput. not sure of the technical details, but i hope that helps answer your Q.