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laptop cannot see sata hard drive

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by philrose

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i recently deleted a partion to get rid of vista since doing so my laptop no longer sees the hard drive as primary master it see the cd drive as primary master instead, i have used all sorts of tools to reformat the hard drive it is set as primary drive and is set active but it still says no hard drive connectedwhen trying to reinstall windows. when looking at devices in bios it sees hard drive, can anyone tell me how to get bios to read hard drive as master thanks in advance for any help

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by hal 9000

When you do a clean install of Windows without a Slipstreamed Install or Recovery Disc you need to apply the drivers that the hardware requires. To do this you need to push the [b]F6[/b] key at the first Blue Screen in the XP setup procedure and then add the SATA Drivers when asked.

Now the problem is that because this unit came preloaded with Vista the maker is unlikely to offer XP Drivers and you are stuck with returning to using Vista off the Recovery Disc that was supplied with the computer.

Even if you can get the SATA Drivers you'll need to make your own Slipstreamed Install CD because the XP installer asks for the SATA Drivers in this case to be loaded from the Root of a Floppy which most new Note Books no longer have. Though depending on the hardware it may be possible to force this issue with a USB Thumb Drive with the drivers on but not in a folder as they need to be in the Root of any Media that they are going to be installed from as the Windows XP installer was never designed to install from anything but the Root of a Floppy.

Col

by philrose

thanks for quick reply hal but the laptop originally had xp installed, vista was put on afterwards because xp was corrupted and the recovery cd is lost, so a copy of vista was put on by my son who borrowed a copy from friend only to find on authentication licences were all used so tried to remove vista only to find it impossible without deleting partion, this was done and thats when problem started does this mean even a new hard drive would not work

by hal 9000

In this case you need to get a copy of the SATA Drivers for the NB from the maker or better still a Slipstreamed Copy of the Recovery Disc. Most of the Big OEM Builders have these available at a small cost and they only have the drivers for the hardware involved and whatever software came with the system [b]As New.[/b]

The problem with not having a Recovery Disc is that the Windows Loader only asks for a Floppy for the SATA Drivers as most times unless you have a NVidia M'Board the SATA drives need drivers installed to be seen by the OS as they remain invisible to XP as it doesn't have the drivers preloaded into the system. This is because XP was originally written 6 years ago and at that time there where no SATA Drives, these came latter and need additional drivers to work.

Unfortunately till the SATA Driver is installed the SATA drive will remain invisible to the Installer.

You may be able to make your own Slipstreamed Install Copy of XP by following the directions here

http://downloads.techrepublic.com.com/download.aspx?docid=278304

I'm not sure if this will work as I've never actually used or attempted to Slipstream my own copies of XP simply because I don't need to but the above may be of some assistance after you download all the drivers from the NB makers Web Site for XP.

Then you may be able to incorporate them all into one install CD and not need to go back after the initial install and load the remaining drivers for Sound, Video and the like.

Lets know if that was of any help.

Col

by jamesmondtan

Go to bios and disable the sata, use ide to detect the hardisk. After install xp then find the sata driver, then change back to sata in bios.

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