Installing Windows on Acer Veriton M670G

[mrstephenw]

I want to avoid installing windows with the disks that came supplied with a Acer Veriton M670G as the OS comes pre-bloated (to the extent where it takes a couple of minutes to compose itself upon entering windows! ;o)

 

I have an XP SP3 disk but when I boot from this not long after the initial loading of drivers I get a blue screen which says I need to check the HD.

 

I've tried another HD and another Windows boot disk, still no joy, so I'm assuming that windows needs some additional drivers to see the HD before I can carry on with the install.

 

Any ideas?

[jamesfed]

Check in the PCs BIOS to see if the SATA controler is set to ACHI mode - if so then you need to change this to IDE or Legacy Mode. (Windows XP wont boot in AHCI)

[mrstephenw]

As easy as that huh? I'll give it a whirl, thanks . . .

[sven]

It's usually called "Compatibility Mode" in the BIOS. I always lock the BIOS down after an installation to stop staff from trying to play around with the BIOS settings or resetting them to defaults.

[mrstephenw]

An invaluable nugget of advice guys. I'm sure I've come up against this in the past too on other machines . . .

[jamesfed]

An invaluable nugget of advice guys. I'm sure I've come up against this in the past too on other machines . . .

Do let us know if it works though

[mrstephenw]

Changed 'Onboard SATA Mode' in bios from RAID to Native IDE as suggested. There was also the option of AHCI in there. Works a treat.

 

Why it defaults to RAID I'm not sure, maybe it thinks it's a server )

 

It just so happens that I finished uninstalling all the prebundled redundant ACER software in record breaking time so won't be fully flexing your solution until a later date! I don't think it will ever be as stable as a fresh install of unbloated XP but I'll ride with this for now.

 

Thanks again for your help.