[JackNSally]

I am trying to install windows 7 on a friends laptop. Once in the installation and it gets to the point of picking a hard drive, it can't find one. It says I can load a driver. The laptop is in an older gateway with an ide drive (i physically checked to make sure). I tried starting the installation within xp and when i'm at the that screen and browse to find a driver it can see the hard drive.

Any suggestions? This on on a Gateway mx6650.

[Davidleebjr]

Hey Jack,

Are you trying to install windows off a USB Stick or off a CD/Dvd? If i'm catching it right by what you said you're trying to install windows while running winxp?

[habbajabba]

Being that it has a relatively slow cpu @ 1.86ghz and 512mb ram, I'd not bother with 7. linux would be even better but you know how that goes with gamers.

[Davidleebjr]

Originally Posted by habbajabba

Being that it has a relatively slow cpu @ 1.86ghz and 512mb ram, I'd not bother with 7. linux would be even better but you know how that goes with gamers.

I did my XP on my old old machine and ran into the same problem you were having. If I remember correctly to simplify matters I:

1. Burned my XP iso to a cd at extremely low speed 4x (I seen quite a few people over the years in threads say that XP install usually hangs up if burned to cd to fast.
2. Ensure your bios has the drives booting in the right order CD/HDD
3. And possibly.. (most likely) your gateway has a recovery partition formatted into it like mine did. I used Paragon Partition Master Pro to completely wipe my drive.

After I ran through Those little tips, finally got me a perfect clean install of my xp.. If you want to give that a try i'll keep an eye on this thread as there are some workarounds but i really suggest the clean install.

ps. i've installed linux ... but i'm not a gamer so I can't help on that end.

Good Luck.