Xp setup wont detect HDD

M

MoDsOuRcEdOtNeT

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 31, 2003
Messages
469
Trying to get a laptop running again as it wont boot due to messed up video drivers and it freezes trying to load the display drivers going into safe mode.

Trying to reinstall xp (tablet edition) and when I boot from cd, and choose to install windows, it says "Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed on your computer"

So I figure I'd go into the bios and play around, the bios sees the drive however I cant change any settings or anything on it.

If its a sata drive then I'd need sata drivers, however this notebook has no floppy drive, and so what are my options?

Gateway TA1 / cx2620 btw.
 
You have two options as you WILL need the sata drivers and thats either slipstream the drivers into a cd with windows xp or get usb floppy drive which may or may not work
 
I recently installed xp in a laptop with SATA drive

at first
gave me the same message as you


in order to solve the problem.. you need to slipstream the drivers into the Xp installation
cd


since you have the original cd.. copy all components of the cd to a folder..

having the sata drivers of the notebook..

then using Nlite program
slip stream the drivers into windows.. is straight forward using the program..

and now make a bootable cd out of it..
using the same Nlite program.. google it
 
MoDsOuRcEdOtNeT said:
Would setup detect a usb drive?
Click to expand...

In my experience USB floppys are not reconized as floppy drives until xp is installed.

As Aztlan suggested use nlite to slipstream the drivers to a XP CD.

I just did it a couple of days ago to "downgrade" 3 laptops to XP and they had no floppy drive.
 
Well I tried that using intels "si sata base win" drivers since gateways are extractable only to a floppy, because it has an intel mobo in it, and burned the iso nlite made, still wouldnt detect it. Am I making an error or could it be wrong drivers?
 
yeah.. you had the wrong drivers.. look more into what controllers your laptop has...

and look from there..
it just takes some search to find the right ones

the motherboard might be intel but the oem most likely used other chip
 
I couldnt figure out what it had in it, cause gateway has no documentation, but I took the gateway drivers and extracted them with magiciso and that did the trick. thanks.
 
I was just about to suggest using a virtual floppy like VFD to extract the files.
 
Stoly said:
In my experience USB floppys are not reconized as floppy drives until xp is installed.
Click to expand...
There are three USB floppy drives that will be detected during the setup, but I'd have to Google for them. It probably won't be needed until a few new batches of chipsets to come, but Vista does allow you to load them from other sources, so finally this arcane method has been changed.
 
Well I guess this topic is reopened. It detects the HDD but windows setup stalls at "examing disk of xx size" or whatever.

Could this still be a bad driver, anything wrong with throwing in all the textmode drivers nlite gives me choices for when slipstreaming the sata drivers? or what else could be hte cause.
 
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