New Laptop. another Vista "?" Plz

well just got this laptop for work. talked to the guy about downgrade to XP and he said it would be OK. well just like ALOT of people i have been seeing when i boot the computer from the CD it will not pick up my hard drive so. SO now i have 2 ideas and i dont know what way to go. but if any one can help me or shed some light it would help alot. i need this thing for work on mon. and idk what to do and good old GM wont work with VISTA. any ways. the laptop is a A205-S5804 now i thought what i needed was a SATA driver for XP. well i put that on a flash drive and when booting from the CD it says for
3RD partys drivers to hit F6. then a few sec it has a screen about no driver was found push "S" to do it manually. so i have my flash drive install it and Nothing. idk if its the wrong program or if it is not reading my flash drive? or do i need a external floppy drive? so i need some information and also do i need a chip set? or can i get away with a driver? or whats the differance.

Next i was reading about a program to wipe out the hard drive and start fresh. im not computer guru but i can do a few things lol i just dont want to wipe it... install the XP cd and it still not see the hard drive. because then im screwed and can get online to try and fix it haha. but i know his "?" is all over the place but i just need some help for mine since i havent seen mine and idk if there all close to the same or not?



Thanks in advance
Shaine

 

did you "extract" the sata drivers to the usb or just copy the package???

that's the first simple thing that comes to my mind- they may still be in the installation package and the os is looking for the driver......

 

something in the BIOS (Setup) about enabling or disabling native (legacy) SATA support?

 

ya i extracted them and put all the info onto the flash drive but it still doesnt pick it up. now that doesnt mean that it is the right sata driver though. then once windows keeps opening on the blue screen and i read the license agreement i will take me into a screen for partitioned and unpartioned space and it sees the usb there but thats all it see's. now should i boot from the USB? or maybe im jst doing something wrong...


Also in the BIOS its a 1.8 and the usb driver is enabled. so it should be seeing the driver i uploaded right?

 

Disable SATA support in your bios, then boot from cd you don't need to do the F6 deal. It should load the operating system without any more problems.

 

i dont see a SATA support option would it be under something else?? also i KILLDISKED the whole system and it still didnt work but i guess if there is a option in the bio's it wouldnt lol

 

Do you see AHCI in the BIOS?

 

MAIN:
system time
system date
hard drive
optical drive
total memorey
system bios 1.80

ADVANCED:
core multiplyer
dynamic CPU frequency
pointing device
built in lan
wake up on lan
wake up on wireless
battery wake up
execue disable bit capacity
legacy USB port

DISPLAY
auto
NTSC (US)

SECURITY:



BOOT:
HDD
FDD
CD/DVD
LAN
USB Memory




and thats all i have in my bio's

 

well i have been doing some researching and have seen people doing a dual boot system. now my question is. would it be better to partionon the hard drive i have into 2, or go and get an external hard drive and load XP onto that and us that. either way it looks like im spending money since i can fine any patitioning software anywere for free

 

cute partition manager, gparted, or the vista partition manager

all free..........

 

you won,nt be able to use usb thumb driver for you f6 drivers in xp you can use a usb floppy or nlite to intergrated them into windows xp install cd