er3bus Posted April 16, 2009 Share Posted April 16, 2009 Hey all, I was cleaning a computer the other day to return to the company, and I had to reinstall winXP on it, because we're running exchange server, and basic protocol and stuff like that, anywhoo, company says it has to be WinXP Pro. So I had Win7 on it, and I really needed to do a clean install so I could just hand it back in with WinXP Pro, but I ran into a bit of a problem, my hard drive isn't being recognized by the XP install disc.... So I thought maybe it was the filesystem, and I bascially cleaned it all, started over with just one huge NTFS partition, still nothing from XP's install disc. So I have my Win7 beta install disc and decided to try it just in case, it worked like a charm. Does anyone have any idea of anything I can do to fix this thing? I'm almost to the point of googling some symbolic dances I could do that might get the attention of the god of technology :P One piece of information that may or may not be important is that this is a laptop, and it had a bunch of Lenovo driver stuff on the XP install originally. but I have installed Windows XP before, with the same disc, and had a successful install. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. -Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
decepticon_eazy_e Posted April 16, 2009 Share Posted April 16, 2009 Hey all, I was cleaning a computer the other day to return to the company, and I had to reinstall winXP on it, because we're running exchange server, and basic protocol and stuff like that, anywhoo, company says it has to be WinXP Pro. So I had Win7 on it, and I really needed to do a clean install so I could just hand it back in with WinXP Pro, but I ran into a bit of a problem, my hard drive isn't being recognized by the XP install disc.... So I thought maybe it was the filesystem, and I bascially cleaned it all, started over with just one huge NTFS partition, still nothing from XP's install disc. So I have my Win7 beta install disc and decided to try it just in case, it worked like a charm. Does anyone have any idea of anything I can do to fix this thing? I'm almost to the point of googling some symbolic dances I could do that might get the attention of the god of technology :P One piece of information that may or may not be important is that this is a laptop, and it had a bunch of Lenovo driver stuff on the XP install originally. but I have installed Windows XP before, with the same disc, and had a successful install. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. -Chris The XP cd you have does not have the drivers needed to read the disk controller. The newer Win7 cd does. Hit F6 during the blue "install starting" screen and load them in via floppy. Or learn to slipstream drivers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted April 16, 2009 Share Posted April 16, 2009 also check in the BIOS to see if the drive controller has an alternative operating mode. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaKo Posted April 17, 2009 Share Posted April 17, 2009 Screw that, just head on over to driverpacks.net and use the neat wizard to slipstream the drivers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davil Posted April 17, 2009 Share Posted April 17, 2009 Screw that, just head on over to driverpacks.net and use the neat wizard to slipstream the drivers. lol good luck with that... I've tried that with nlite a few times and it worked once or twice only (to be honest I probably had the wrong drive file or something). Anyway, the F6 mode is definitely the most likely to work [if you have a floppy drive + disk that is.] The only problem is figuring out exactly which driver to use. some inf setups have 5 or 6 drivers but usually a bit of googling about your motherboard and you'll know which one to use. Or good old trial and error. :-D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
er3bus Posted April 17, 2009 Author Share Posted April 17, 2009 Thanks guys! that helped alot! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaKo Posted April 17, 2009 Share Posted April 17, 2009 lol good luck with that... I've tried that with nlite a few times and it worked once or twice only (to be honest I probably had the wrong drive file or something). Anyway, the F6 mode is definitely the most likely to work [if you have a floppy drive + disk that is.] The only problem is figuring out exactly which driver to use. some inf setups have 5 or 6 drivers but usually a bit of googling about your motherboard and you'll know which one to use. Or good old trial and error. :-D I'll give you that, circa SP2 it was the business but more recently I've started seeing errors with it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davil Posted April 17, 2009 Share Posted April 17, 2009 I'll give you that, circa SP2 it was the business but more recently I've started seeing errors with it. ah. I didn't realise that I just thought I was being dim. ah well. at least I know what to do Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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