Problems with a new Dell laptop and XP

A

AngryJim

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 20, 2006
Messages
234
I just received a new laptop from Dell with Vista installed, however I want to run XP. When I try to install, I get the message "There is no hard drive on this system", even though Vista runs just fine. When I try to run XP setup from the desktop rather than booting from the cd, the option to install XP is grayed out and un-clickable.

Any ideas?
Thanks.
 
You probably need to install the controller drivers, by using a floppy drive.

Be aware however, that some new laptops do not have XP drivers available. If it was me, I'd leave Vista installled, and then just run XP in a Virtual PC 2007 VM.
 
My roommate suggested running 'Bart PE' and that didn't find the hard drive either. Darik's boot and nuke did see the hard drive and is running right now, I'll see if that helps.
 
If you booted from the XP CD, and it didn't find the hard drive, and the hard drive in question is working fine, hardware-wise, then you are going to need XP drivers to load at the F6 prompt. This is assuming the exist, which you should find out on the support page for the laptop. You're very first step is to go to Dell's website and look for XP drivers for your laptop. If they aren't listed, you may be out of luck for running XP directly. That's when my VM suggestion would work.
 
Why did you not get it in XP? Cuz dell has 2 offers when you buy a new system it always says *Computer Name* with xp or vista.
 
Strangely enough, SuSE is installing just fine right now. I tried Fedora 7 but it turns out the version I downloaded has some known issues with dvd roms, so I'm torrenting the latest version right now.
 
There's nothing strange about it. As others have already said, to install XP, you will need to load the Serial ATA drivers during the boot process (it will say at the bottom "Hit F6 to install SCSI device drivers" or something to that effect). Without those drivers, Windows will not be able to communicate with the HDD. Alternatively you can go into the BIOS and set the SATA options to legacy mode, but you'll potentially have tiegredated performance (though I haven't played around with it enough to say whether that really is the case or not).
 
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