• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

Problem with reverting from Vista home to XP Pro

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

anwar1337

Member
Joined
Apr 2, 2003
I just got a new laptop, and it came with vista home which blows and takes up about 1000mb of ram with only 3 windows of IE open and i only have a gig so the computer is running sluggish. Its a core 2 duo @ 1.6, 1gb of ram, 120gb hdd,8400m gs.

My problem is... When I put the xp cd in, i get into setup and once its done loading its preliminary files it asks if I want to repair, I hit no. Then the next screen says... Windows did not find a HD in this computer so setup can not go on, press enter to restart...
Is this because of some different file system that vista uses? How should I go about taking care of this. You guys are the smartest people I know that deal with computers so please help a broTher out! :) Thanks.
BTW its a Dell Vostro 1500 if any of you guys needed to know
 
What do you mean wipe it clean... thats what Im trying to do with the XP cd but it wont even let me format it doesnt go past the repair screen... Is there some program i can burn onto a cd that will wipe my hd and put it back into NTFS? Theres no way that windows cant find a hd unless itcant recognize the file system.
 
More then likely since you are using a socket 775 system you are going to need to find out what chipset your harddrive is controlled by and then get some sata/raid drivers for it.

The reason it says "no hdd" is it can not see the HDD.

If you want to take a stab in the dark without looking up your chipset in Vista device manager... then download the atest jmicron drivers, and F6 install with hte windows XP cd :)
 
How would SATA/RAID drivers help in this situation? Laptops now a days use SATA? I'm pretty sure its IDE but i might be wrong. And youre saying install the SATA/RAID drivers during the initial file loading of XP's setup?
 
It's sata for sure so if XP can't see the drive you'll need a slipstreamed XP install CD or a usb floppy for the F6 install to load the appropriate driver. What brand and model of notebook? Check the manufacturers support site and see if you can download the driver there.
 
Yeah this really has nothing to do with Vista being on there before. It doesn't have the drivers necessary to see your drive and you need to load them via F6 at setup start. Without a floppy drive, it will be considerably more difficult.
 
Ok, found the chipset driver from dells website which states SATA storage support. Its an exe, will that be able to run during the windows setup? Also do you guys think I can use a USB stick for this orno?
 
Ok well its not letting me install anything without an A drive. Is there any other way to tackle this problem or am i screweD?
 
What would happen if I did a recovery? Same thing as before, the whole no hd recognition?
 
What would happen if I did a recovery? Same thing as before, the whole no hd recognition?
If you're using XP sp2, the sata drivers are included and load automatically. The problem is the hidden restore partition Dell put on th HDD. Boot the Windows Install CD into Recovery Consul and run fixmbr and fixboot. I think you can run Format from there too. If not, just get a DOS boot disk (you can download the files from numerous places.) and Fdisk then format.

There are also methods for installing XP and keeping VISTA there so you can dual boot...but that's a whole different story.
 
Back