Need help with Windows Vista Basic...

L

Lyquist

2[H]4U
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Aug 21, 2004
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I am having a problem with Windows Vista Basic. A customer gave me his Compaq Presario 504US laptop to install XP on because Vista sucks on that particular laptop. The problem is that when I boot from the Windows XP disk, it doesn't see a hard drive. I ran SpinRite on the drive and the drive shows up and is fine.

I also tried to use some tools to fdisk the drive, but I need some recommendations as to what to use for this. I have never had the XP disk not see the drive before. I checked on HP's site for hard drive drivers that I could slipstream on the XP disc, but I didn't see any.

I am just dead in the water with this job until I can either fdisk the hard drive somehow or get the hard drive to show up. Does anyone have any suggestions?? I am very new to Vista, so maybe it is somehow locking the drive to not be seen from XP.

The customer does not have recovery disks at all. I don't want to give up just yet, but I don't want to give him back an unuseable machine either. Thanks in advance for your help.
 
you prolly need a SATA driver, easiest way would be to check the chipset and see if you can get it from straight from intel's site.
 
MrMitch said:
you prolly need a SATA driver, easiest way would be to check the chipset and see if you can get it from straight from intel's site.
Click to expand...

How would I check the chipset in Vista?? I am really clueless about Vista to be honest. The machine runs extremely poorly with VIsta right now to be honest. Thanks in advance for helping me.
 
I downloaded the chiputil from Intel's site, but it wouldn't work. I'll try cpu-z next.
 
most likely a intel i945GM being a intel 950gma intergrated video laptop (same as my e1405).
 
Check HP's website for the driver.
Also, Vista is no different from XP in a lot of places, one of them being how to check devices installed on the computer.

Right click on computer > manage > device manager.
 
It is a 945 chipset, but I don't see anything on Intel's site for SATA drivers, but maybe I'm overlooking something. Like I said, I've never had to do this before. XP Pro has just always installed for me.

The weird thing is this...if windows xp won't see the drive, then why will SpinRite? I hate to give up on this job, but that is where I'm heading with it.
 
floppy configuration file on the bottom of the page.......makes the floppy for f6 drivers. just extract the image, make a bootable thumb drive or slipstream it..................................
 
I figured it out. I went to hp's site and got into a chat with a tech, and I had to disable Native SATA mode in the bios, after I did that, XP saw the hard drive. I just wanted to say that just in case someone else came up with the same problem.
 
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