XP won't recognize hard drive

Hi all,

I'm trying to install XP onto my vista Gateway notebook. I created a small partition on my 2nd hard drive, formatted it with NTFS, and marked it as an active partition. I was all ready to install XP on it but after loading all of the files from the cd, it went to the disk selection menu and said "no disk recognized". When I tried to install anyway, it gave me the error message that I'm about to post bellow. My device manager shows two ST9160823AS ATA disks, both of which are functioning properly. I just reformatted them and installed Vista x64 3 days ago so I'm pretty sure it's not a corrupt disk. Can anyone suggest a solution?

Here's the error message I got:

 

Have you gone into your BIOS to check that SATA native support is off? If it is and you're still getting issues, post the system stats, in particular the chipset manufacturer. There is a way to load SATA drivers using an external floppy drive, I've had to do it myself.

Also as a note:
Are you trying to install using an SP1 disc? If you can get a hold of an SP2 disc to install that might also correct your issue.

 

Where is the option for native support? The only SATA-related option is AHCI/Compatibility, which I have set for AHCI. Is that what you're talking about? I had to load the chipset driver via USB for the vista installation but xp doesn't even give me the option.

 

Yeah that's the one, I believe.
If that doesn't work...
If you have the driver then down in the bottom when the XP setup starts, it'll flash something about hitting F6 to install a 3rd party RAID or SATA driver.

 

Aha, thank you. I will try both. Will I need to run it in compatibility all the time or just when I first install?

 

Unless you load the driver during setup you will need to run it in compatibility mode all the time or XP will crash during startup

Let me know if it works

 

Here are some of the many other threads on this issue, which can be found by pasting the title of this thread into the search box on this site.

http://www.notebookreview.com/searc...F;GIMP:0000FF;FORID:11&hl=en&btnAction=SEARCH

 

Thanks, Kroof. +rep for you. Now to find drivers!

 

What's the full laptop model number, I'll point you to the download site. (It's downloadable from the manufacturer of your laptops chipset.)

 

It's the gateway p-172x fx. I downloaded the modded video driver for XP and I have the network driver installed. I really don't care about peripherals like webcam because my cheap student copy of XP is only for programs that don't work with Vista. However, can you tell me what to do with the sound driver? The video and ethernet drivers installed independently of the vista drivers but when I try to install the audio it tries to overwrite the vista driver. What should I do with it? Also, should I download the chipset driver?

P.S. Interestingly enough, my problem with vista is not that it can't run old programs but rather that it can't install them. When I boot to XP, install from there, reboot to vista and run them, most are actually more stable than XP!

 

At first I thought you were looking for the SATA drivers, so I got the links, then I realized that's not what your looking for . Here they are anyway though, just for the heck of it in case you ever want it .

This is the driver for XP sata support during the windows install (it's the XP 32-bit version, I couldn't find a 64-bit version listed, so hopefully 32-bit is what you have):

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/con...01&DwnldId=16013&strOSs=&OSFullName=&lang=eng

This is a guide to extract the drivers from the above download:

http://johndball.blaize.net/2007/09/07/help-extracting-sata-drivers-without-a-floppy/



In regards to the driver overwriting issues, it sounds like XP and Vista are installed on the same partition or using common files? That really isn't the proper way to set up a dual-boot and is likely why you're having trouble. XP should really be on an isolated partition... That will resolve your driver-overwriting issues.

 

Thanks for the links . No way though, my vista is on hard disk 0 while xp is on a 5 GB partition on hard disk 1. I have no idea why it tried to overwrite the vista driver.

 

Wow that is a weird issue. I'm at a loss here... The two separate partitions shouldn't be installing to each other.

The best advice I can think of would be to just extract the drivers, then right-click on the appropriate device in the Device Manager. From there chose to "update driver" and specify the folder you extracted the drivers to as the location. It is possible that XP is set up as being the D: directory rather than the C:, and the driver installer programs are getting mangled.

 

Audigy has a nice guide on re-enabling AHCI on XP and in case you`re interested , I`ll try to find it.