slipstreaming SATA drivers?

so I want to go Vista -> XP
and from my very limited knowledge..... there's something about disabling native sata drivers and slipstreaming XP ones what is this... some help

 

I've slipstreamed once and found it to be a lot more trouble than it's worth.

I had to add Sata chipset drivers for sata because Sata didn't exist at the time SP2 was released and my load CDs were Sata. Or now that i remember it, I slipstreamed SP2 and the Satadrivers beause I didn't have an SP2 distribution. That was what it seem like such a large job.

If I remember correctly to have to add an inf file and the drivers and then add the inf file to a master inf... but I could be wrong about that as it's been quite a while snce I did it.

 

It's something you may or may not need.
Basically though, slipstreaming simply means adding extra drivers (or Windows Updates or service packs) to your Windows installation CD.
The most common use is to add SATA drivers since Windows may not otherwise recognize your harddrive during installation, which makes it pretty tricky to install anything onto it.

If you have another computer with a CD burner, you can just go ahead and try to install (and if it fails to install, you can use your other computer to slipstream the drivers to a new CD and try again)
If you don't have another computer, it'll be a bit tricky if you start the installation, and it then fails because it can't find a SATA driver. Of course, you could reinstall another OS such as Vista, but that'd take time...

But assuming you do need to slipstream the driver, it's actually fairly simple.
Download nLite and run it. It'll ask you for a Windows CD and copy the contents to your harddrive (or maybe you have to copy the files yourself, can't remember. Just follow instructions)

Then go to lenovo's website, and look up the appropriate driver for your laptop (most likely it's listed as Intel Chipset)
You may have to run the downloaded file to extract it, since you need a folder containing a .inf file and a few .sys files.
here
nLite will ask you if you wish to add any drivers to your Windows CD, so you just click yes, and point it to the folder containing the .inf from the driver, and click ok.

If it was the right driver, it'll ask you if it should be added as a textmode driver, which you say yes to. (Other drivers will be added as non-textmode, can't remember what that's called, and while they'll still be available to Windows in the end, they won't be visible to the early parts of the installer (the, well, textmode, part of it (big blocky DOS-like font and no graphics, on a blue background)

If in doubt, just download all the drivers from lenovo's website, and add them to the cd until you find one where it asks you about adding as textmode driver. There's no harm in adding too many/the wrong drivers.

Once you've added the driver, you can fiddle with any other options and customizations you like, and then nlite will burn the result to a new CD. Then you just install from that, and it should work.

The only hard part is finding the correct driver, but the entire process has become a lot easier over the last year or two, as nLite has matured.

I slipstreamed an XP CD for my T60 some 6 months ago, but can't remember the exact details

 

aight thanks a lot !

i couldnt' even start installing xp b/c it couldn't even recognize which HDD to install it in

 

You don't HAVE to slipstream. Remeber there is always the F6 during installation. If I remember correctly, you can use a Flash drive.

 

what's the f6?

I just took a look at the lenovo site:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=migr-62909

and it seems that the SATA drivers are the same for xp and vista... what's up with that? I'm not seeing the HD when i try to install, which is a SATA driver issue isn't it...

 

Ok, before install XP, go to bios disable (change to) IDE mode, and after install XP, just load the storage matrix then enable the (change back to) SATA mode.

 

When installing XP, soon after booting the distribution CD there is a message at the bottom of the screen, "to load drivers press F6". If you press F6 quickly, the installation will stop and let you load drivers either on a floppy or I believe a flash disk. There are two modes durng installation on is IDE mode and the other is the native installation controller mode. Howver my desktop has Sata DVDs. The installation begins in IDE mode but during more sophisticated portions of the installation switches to native and if there are no native mode drivers the installation will BSOD. F6 will allow you to load sata drivers during XP installations.