Girl Needs Help! Can't Install XP....

I know it's a cheap ploy, but it seems to work for other girls on the site....

Anyway, I have Vista installed on a tiny partition on my Asus F3S. Another partition has openSUSE, and the third is a shared partition. I work from home, and my company's software is not yet Vista-compatible, so I need to install Windows XP on a fourth partition.

I have the partition ready, and formatted as NTFS. Unfortunately, when I boot from my Windows XP CD, it says that it cannot detect any online hard drives. It doesn't see any of my partitions. I'm a bit stumped, not sure how to make it 'see' the partition I have set aside for it.

Any help would be much appreciated.

 

You need to go into the BIOS and disable the ACHPI. This will allow an XP disk to recognize the sata drive. After the OS is istalled you need to install the SATA drivers and revers the setting in your BIOS.

This is because XP doesn't have built in sata drivers, but Vista does.

 

The BIOS may refer to the above option as SATA controller (Enabled/Disabled). Alternatively you can 'slipstream' SATA drivers into a windows XP installation. Some laptops dont support deactivating SATA in the BIOS (like mine) so you need to use a utility like nlite (free download off the net) to integrate SATA drivers into a new CD. You'll need to match the SATA drivers to your hardware exactly otherwise it wont work (it wont hurt your system if you stuff up but you'll waste a blank CD each time). If you need more details you can PM me or someone else should be able to help. A word of warning, I've heard vista and XP dont get along in a dual boot configuration unless you install XP first. Im not sure if this is true or not but you may want to make sure.

Good Luck

Grand Admiral

 

Why would it matter if it were a girl or a guy who needed help? It's the internet. It's pretty anonymous and disconnected.

 

Couldn't tell you, I'm not a guy. But for some reason it makes a difference, so I'm not complaining.

By the way people, I changed the "SATA Mode" from "Enhanced" to "Compatible" and that let me install XP up until the computer required a reboot to finish installing. Once it reboots, I get an "Error. Unable to load operating system." I deleted the XP partition, still get that message, so now I'm running a repair install of Vista.

 

Make sure you save the changed settings. It should not change it back for you, so that must be your problem.

 

The first time I changed it, I hit "Save and Exit", so I'm not sure why it would revert back after being rebooted.

 

Grey,

you're doing it the hard way. Installing XP after you have a bootrecord filled with Vista & SuSe can be quite a hassle.

As pointed out earlier, the AHCI support isn't built into the original Windows XP installer. The easiest way here is to create a customized XP install disc (either on a USB flash drive or a CD-RW disc) using nlite.

First you have to identify your AHCI controller so you can add the appropriate textmode driver to the windows XP setup. (just google this or search this forum, there is a whole lot of threads about this (like this one).

Now installing XP after Vista (SuSe) adds a couple of issues to this project of yours. As XP installs it overwrites your bootrecord (it's an old OS and doesn't recognize newer/other installed OS versions). Therefore you have to follow this guide. If you already prepared the partition for XP, then you can ignore the 1st part of the article.

One more word of advice, read the whole article at least once so you have a rough idea about what you're doing.

And have fun with your triple boot. (maybe, you'll have to re-install your SuSe distro after this one (if you don't have backup of the Vista/SuSe bootloader).

 

if u still have ur recovery partition, this would make the 5th partition, and ur comp might get choke on this

cheers ...

 

To dual boot XP and Vista, you have to install XP (the older OS), then install Vista (the newer OS). Won't work the other way around.

Here's the Asus Support Download website for drivers.

http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us

 

It CAN be done, but you have to jump through several hoops and repair the boot records.

Gary

 

I'm sure she'd be glad for you to walk her through it then.

 

The message posted by Cyanize (which was posted two messages prior to yours stating that it could not be done) gives a link to the details about how to clean up the boot record issue if you install XP after Vista.

Gary

 

You never know when a girl can come in handy

 

Lol!

Anyway everyone, thanks very much for the detailed advice you've given. Unfortunately, I kind of destroyed my other OS's by trying to install XP, so I'm starting from scratch now. I deleted ALL of the partitions, installed Vista temporarily so that I can create the customized XP disc, and then am going to format the entire drive before I install XP. Screw Vista, I'm never using it again.

At the moment I'm following this guide: http://forums.techguy.org/tech-tips-tricks/638516-howto-installing-windows-xp-asus.html

My computer is an Asus F3SV, so hopefully it'll work out.

 

Well, I hope everything works out for you. I'd like to set-up a dual boot with XP and Vista, but I haven't the time to mess with it, so Vista it is for now.

 

Definitely install XP first if you do... And I won't even go into what a horrible time I had resizing Vista to begin with. It's a total nightmare.

 

Well I can't blame you for switching back to XP.
I did the same thing after using Vista x64 for a while.
Vista just ain't everyone's cup of tea.

The guide you found is nice, although the author could've included some more details. (but there are so many other threads floating in these forums, that you should be ok)

Have fun with your fresh install of XP

 

I'm going to miss how shiny Vista was...but not that much.

Now I just need to wait for the XP torrent to download on my uber slow connection.