BleepingComputer.com: Changing From Vista Back To Xp

Not sure which section to put this in.. so I went for the OS I currently have.

I have bought a new laptop which is running Vista Basic.. All my other computers in the household run XP Home.. I want to change my laptop to XP but am finding it difficult to say the least. I have tried a straight reformat, but comes up saying that there is no hard drive. The hard drive is partitioned. I have tried to remove the partition, and seems to have done so, but I don't have access to the half that I removed.. But still it says that i have no hard drive... If someone could help me please! I'm going stir crazy!

Thanx

What make and model laptop do you have? I suspect that the hard drive being missing is due to not having SATA drivers installed - so that's the first thing we'd have to locate.

Installation of XP should be fairly easy - but it's the installation of the hardware drivers that may make or break this project. Most (but not all) hardware manufacturer's offer XP drivers - but finding them is difficult. Once we know the make and model of the laptop, we should be able to point you in the correct direction for drivers.

Its an Acer Extensa 5220.

I should have thought of that when I first posted.. DOH! Sorry..

It looks like this may not be all that difficult - lot's of XP drivers at this link (Acer's Australia and NZ sites are down right now): http://www.acerpanam.com/synapse/forms/por...id=3394#results

But, for now the issue is the hard drive. Try booting from a diagnostic utility available from the manufacturer of your hard drive. To figure this out, you'll have to unplug the system and remove the battery - then open up the case to locate the hard drive.

Run the diagnostic to see what the status of the hard drive is - and write down the model number (as it'll help us to identify if it's a SATA or IDE hard drive). Once we have that info we'll be able to troubleshoot the drive recognition issue.

ok.. on the back of the Hard drive it, which I'm assuming is the model number of the hard drive is ELITEK 60.4T328.003 A REV:A03 07.11.19 N as for finding the make.. I have no idea... it seems to be common in Acer Laptops.

How do I run a diagnostic?

Can you determine if the drive is SATA or IDE?

Try running this free utility to see if it recognizes the drive: http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT

IDE HTS541680J9SA00

Did it pass the tests? It's an 80 gB Hitachi SATA drive.

As long as you're at the Acer site above, download all of the drivers and save them to a CD for use later on.

To load the drivers for XP, you'll have to download the AHCI Intel Driver Ver. 7.5.0.1017 (direct download link here: http://www.acerpanam.com/synapse/forms/por...=&areaid=12 ). Open up the .zip file and navigate down to the directory with the readme.txt file in it.

Open up the readme.txt file and scroll down to section 5.3 - that gives instructions on how to use the F6 method to install these drivers when installing XP. To do this you'll need a floppy drive. Since most laptops don't have these, you'll most likely have to purchase a USB floppy drive - or follow this link about how to slipstream the SATA drivers into your Windows installation CD: http://www.maximumpc.com/article/How-To--S...tion?page=0%2C1

Once that's done, and XP is installed, then we can install the rest of the drivers from the CD. Any that are missing after that should be easy to locate. FYI - it's best to install the drivers in the order from the lowest level of functioning to the highest level. Here's a link to the Intel suggestions: http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/...b/cs-008814.htm Here's a better version from Dell (skip Step 1): http://support.dell.com/support/topics/glo...040A68F5B281A12

Yes it passed the tests. It said "Operation completed successfully. Disposition code - 0x00"

So installing these drivers will allow it to install Xp over Vista and help it find the hard-drive??

Also, it's an IDE drive, but when running the 'test' it says the device is an "ATA", is that correct??

During the initial setup of XP you'll see a message at the bottom of the screen that says something like "Press F6 to install RAID/SCSI drivers" - that's when you'll need to insert the floppy with drivers on it.

I am at the screen where I specify additional device, and I follow the instructions; I plug in my thumbnail drive, and press enter, but the laptop doesn't recognise it, and it doesn't have a floppy drive...

What should I try now?

There are only 2 ways that I know of to do this in XP.
1) Use a floppy drive (you can purchase a USB one at most major retailers)
2) Slipstream the driver into your XP installation CD ( http://www.maximumpc.com/article/How-To--S...tion?page=0%2C1 )