reinstall windows xp

[neon]

Hello all,

I have a problem that I havnt come across before, basically I have a load of old teachers laptops all fujitsu seimens lifebooks e seris, they work and boot fine however are slow, I thought I would just reinstall xp on them and see how they go, when I put the xp disk in I press enter to install windows and it tells me the hard drive is not found? Remove the disk and loads up fine... anyone had this before or know what I should do?

Cheers,

[ICTSM]

It usually means that the harddrive is not IDE. It may be SATA...in which case you need an XP disk that has SP2 or higher on it.

[neon]

didnt know that, the disk I am using has sp2 on it, the hard drive is sata.

[ICTSM]

Obviously, the drivers are not included on SP2 either. Try SP3.

Or - did you get any floppy disks with the laptop? Older SATA drivers usually came on the these and had to be inserted when you pressed F6 during the windows install.

[kevbaz]

Or simply change the mode in bios...

[RTFM]

You can find the correct drivers (i think) and put them onto a floppy, when windows xp is beginning the installing i think you can press F6 to point the installation, and you can point it to the floppy and it'll work.

I had to do this with an Acer not long ago.

Just google it thats all i needed to do.

Someone will probably be able to expand on the above as it may be slightly inaccurate. I will do some googling myself and see if the above can be made more coherant


EDIT: See ICTSM post, thats what i was on about

[neon]

what do i need to configure in the bios?

[glennda]

change the hard drive to legacy mode rather then native or something like that

[sonofsanta]

Make sure the SATA mode is NOT set to AHCI, this causes the problem.

As for SATA drivers (which have always been a pain in my with XP), find the drivers from the manufacturer website and use nLite to package them into the XP CD, then you can just boot from CD as normal.

You can also slipstream security updates, service packs, other hardware drivers etc. into the XP install CD with nLite. It is magical and pretty straightforward to use.

[mac_shinobi]

Make sure the SATA mode is NOT set to AHCI, this causes the problem.

As for SATA drivers (which have always been a pain in my with XP), find the drivers from the manufacturer website and use nLite to package them into the XP CD, then you can just boot from CD as normal.

You can also slipstream security updates, service packs, other hardware drivers etc. into the XP install CD with nLite. It is magical and pretty straightforward to use.

Enable IDE emulation in the bios ( instrucions may differ depending on the make / model of your motherboard ) then you can follow instructions below to re enable ahci mode

How to enable AHCI : Windows XP Expertester

at least for the driver side of windows - not sure if you re enable it in the bios if that will muck it up.

[dwhyte85]

Agree with a simple solution of changing the mode for SATA in the BIOS from AHCI to IDE compat. Probably not the ideal solution though :-)

[sonofsanta]

Is there a real need to faff about switching back after though? The computer will work fine in legacy mode and most users won't notice the difference, I'd have thought. Not something I've ever thought about in much detail though so feel free to show me the error of my ways!

[mac_shinobi]

Not something I've ever thought about in much detail though so feel free to show me the error of my ways!

same here until this question - on the computers I have had this I just left it in the IDE emulation mode and not bothered with anything else. Hence mentioning at the end of my above comment not sure about swapping it back ??