formatting toshiba vista laptop - win xp install giving saying no available HDD??

[Takedown3]

anyone have any input on this? the installation was setting up (boot from CDROM) and after it went thru all the loading and shit the bluescreen told me that there was no hard drives available for installation and forced me to quit.

the message also said something about might having to use specific software or something like that implying that the hdd might be locked or something???

[Takedown3]

if i put the CD in and try to load setup.exe thru windows vista the options to install or even check compatibility are not available... not sure what the heck is up here. does vista lock the hdd or something?

[Takedown3]

do i have to format vista off the machine first or something??? this is lunacy!

[Isiolia]

Most likely, the SATA mode in the BIOS is set to AHCI or SATA Native Mode - allows for more modern features like hot-swapping or TRIM with SSDs. Vista (and 7, etc) include drivers for that by default. XP doesn't.

You either need to set the SATA mode in the BIOS to Compatibility Mode/ATA-Mode, or provide the driver during XP setup in order to see the drive.

[Takedown3]

bios doesn't have anything useful that i can use to change, worst bios ever in fact. i've had to build a custom XP ISO using nfile, so far it seems to have worked as i'm currently formating. hopefully the installation goes well

[Ratatapa]

Also means that your WinXP installation doesn't have the SATA drivers for your HDD, the old method was to find it and install it on a floppy and put the floppy inside while XP was booting for the installation for it to detect the HDD.

But Nlite also works

[Takedown3]

nlite seems to be working excellent still formatting the drive, should be done in about 10 mins and then hopefully the installation goes well. i dont anticipate any problems