Installing XP on a vista computer

[JohnyIversen]

Hi there,

I'm new around here, but I hope someone can help me with this problem of mine.

I currently have a Danish Windows Vista, Home Premium (with all security updates) installed on my laptop, and because some programming software (which we use on my education) can't run on this windows version, I'm trying to install Windows XP Pro sp2 (also Danish version). However, I can't install it, due to the fact that my harddisk is a SATA drive, and the XP installer can't find that.

I've got a 160 GB harddrive, which is partitioned into three drives, one with all my software and vista on, one with the drivers for my laptop, and one that is empty and ready to have XP installed on it.

I've heard that this could be solved by shutting off RAID or something like that in the BIOS, but I've looked and looked, but I simply can't seem to find it anywhere. I've tried to find the BIOS somewhere, to see if they have it described, but I can't find that either.

I'm running a Phoenix BIOS version R01-B0J, or so it says in the BIOS menu at least (and VGA version 08.15 I believe it was), and it's just not like the one you have on your website (http://www.computerhope.com/help/phoenix.htm).

In the advanced options, I can only see the harddrive and the cd-rom drive, and some other stuff that I can't remember, but seemed quite irrelevant for this problem. I can then switch the settings of the SATA drive, away from AUTO as it is on now, to USER or CD-rom, removeable IDE, and a few other options, where the IDE one didn't work either (tried that one).

Also, I have no floppy drive, and no external once around either, so I can't load the driver in the installation either.

I hope I've detailed it enough for you, and that someone has an idea about what I can do.

Thank you for your time and reading all this.

Best regards,
Johny Iversen

[Deerpark]

You'll need a driver for the raid controller your sata disk is attached to in order for XP to recognize the disk (Disabling the raid wont help). Usually you would just insert a floppy with the driver when the XP setup loads its drivers, but since you don't have a floppy drive you can't do that of course.

A way of getting around this, would be to slipstream the driver on to the XP install disc, effectively creating an install disc with the driver already on it. I've personally never done this, but here is a thread discussing it.
http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=13173&hl=Si3112r

But this is just the first idea that came to mind... maybe someone else got an easier solution.

[JohnyIversen]

Yeah, that might work, I'll definately look into that. As for the other solution, I know that works as well, because a guy from my class had the same problem and fixed it like that, because it was only the XP installer that couldn't recognize a harddrive running RAID... So that would be the easiest approach, if only I knew how to do that in my BIOS...

[Deerpark]

So that would be the easiest approach, if only I knew how to do that in my BIOS...

I'm sorry I don't quite follow you, what is it you want to do in your BIOS?
You don't have a RAID setup if you only got one hdd, so disabling the RAID won't do anything. I'm pretty sure the problem is that the XP installer don't have the driver for the controller your SATA disk is connected to.
If you can beg, borrow or steal an external floppy drive I think that might be the easiest solution.

[JohnyIversen]

Well noone uses floppy anymore, so I haven't heard about anyone having an external drive like that in ages.. :S

As for the RAID, I might be mixing up the terms, but I should be able to make it work like it was an IDE drive, and then XP installer would be able to see it. Atleast that's a solution that has worked for some. And that option should be found in the BIOS.

[Deerpark]

As for the RAID, I might be mixing up the terms, but I should be able to make it work like it was an IDE drive, and then XP installer would be able to see it. Atleast that's a solution that has worked for some. And that option should be found in the BIOS.

I've never heard of that and I'm having difficulties imagining how it would work... But you can usually only configure the most basic settings on a laptop BIOS anyway so such an option might not be available.

[JohnyIversen]

Hmm, well I seem to have aqquired another problem.. I can't find the drivers needed.. :-/

I've found another link than the one you supplied, which seems easier to use at least, and you can find the link by searching for "msfn's unattended" on google. It should be the first hit there.

Anyways, neither the link you supplied, or this more userfriendly guide, supplies info as to how to extract the driver files from an installation package, as that seems to be the only thing I could find.

The controller I need a driver for is the following:
Intel(R) 82801G (ICH7 Family) Ultra ATA Storage Controllers - 27DF

The only thing I could find then, was this package I already have on my driver partition, and it's filled with .inf and .cat files.. Any idea on how to solve that?