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Laptop problems
speedyxjs - 1/1/10 at 01:35 PM

My dads laptop wouldn't start a few months back so he has gone out and brought a new one and was going to throw his old one out but i said i might be able to make use of it.

I found out that it is recognising the hard drive but for some reason couldnt access it so my aunt (knows a fair bit about computers) told me that the hard drive was probably corrupt.

Iv just been out and brought a new one (£35 at pc world) but it still wont access it to allow me to install windows on it.

Not sure where to look next so thought the next port of call would be the coputer genius' here

dlatch - 1/1/10 at 02:16 PM

was the new HD formatted ready to be installed with windows?

ie: XP will need it converted to ntfs
it should detect the hard drive and format it if its not done so all ready. another thing to check is pin settings on HD so its the master drive

speedyxjs - 1/1/10 at 02:42 PM

Its only finding the hard drive in bios but not windows setup so is not giving me the option to format.

McLannahan - 1/1/10 at 02:46 PM

If BIOS will see the drive it's a good start!

What error is the Windows setup CD giving?

Scotty - 1/1/10 at 03:03 PM

could be that windows needs a driver to find the hard drive, early versions of xp needed this for sata hard drives, this would explain why the bios can see it
if i remember correctly when windows starts to load, press F6 for option to load driver
if this is the problem you need to get a driver off the cd that came with system or off the motherboard's manufacturers web site

mad4x4 - 1/1/10 at 04:50 PM

try setting the BIOS to boot from CD a and boot off of the Windows XP recover CD.

The drive from PC world will be blank and need to have XP installed onto it.

You chould have got revocery CD 's with the laptop or they can be re-ordered from the Manuf, website.

speedyxjs - 1/1/10 at 05:49 PM

quote:
Originally posted by McLannahan
What error is the Windows setup CD giving?



speedyxjs - 1/1/10 at 05:53 PM

Forgot to mention (not sure if it makes a difference) the laptom originally had Vista but i want to install XP (never got on with vista)

MikeRJ - 1/1/10 at 06:05 PM

Very likely you have a SATA drive, what version of XP do yuo have on CD?

If you have a floppy drive on the laptop (unlikely) you can use this to load the SATA drivers during installation, otherwise the best route forward is you use another computer to "slipstream" the drivers into a custom XP setup disk

speedyxjs - 1/1/10 at 07:20 PM

Problem solved guys.

It seems a pc/laptop with Vista installed wont let you install XP for some reason.

I also tried the old hard drive and it wouldnt even attempt to reinstall windows so i think it was forked

Cheers