PC geeks

[lapta]

Need help.

Laptop came with vista

Vista ***ed up, so thought ah i'll stick windows xp on it.

Stick the windows disk in, syas cant find hard drive!

Run a partition software (in dos) says cant find the hard drive.

Took harddrive out and plugged it in to my PC, windows finds it, but cant format it.

Used partition software to make a partition on the hard drive, pluged it back in to the laptop, laptop says no bootable partition.

I have ran every program in my partiton software (totallying about 20 hours now, of low level formating, creating bootable partition etc) but still when i put in windows disk it says hard drive not found, with out a disk in it say no bootable partition!

I thought it might be a SATA/RAID drive problem, so i used my windows disk which hard all the RAID drivers already installed on it, but still no luck.

If any one can help it would be great.

Thanks.

[Warrior]

You should have formatted your hard drive while you run Windows XP cd instead of using a partition program. The partition program is for running two operation systems after you install the other operation system. And Vista is not really good because some of these types don't have many manfacture features. You should run Windows XP only or Windows 7.

I alway change operation systems. I have Linux and Windows. I think you should reset your bios. It should be able to read your hard drive.

You don't have to be afraid of formatting Vista. It's very possible to hold files for you. I formatted entire windows xp. It still remembers my original cd. You should have had a backup for Windows Vista.

[lordatrox]

the main question i would have to ask from a computer technicians point of view is how exactly did vista mess up in the first place, as this error could be 1 of a few different things., to start is your ide bus shagged so therefore the laptop cannot read from the hard drive, is the motherboard shagged which would cause similiar problems? or is it something really simple like a memory stick gone corrupt therefore the laptop cannot hold the install files in the ram while it is sorting out the install.
Anyways like i said how did vista mess up in the first place, its generally a good place to start from

[Warrior]

Need help.

Laptop came with vista

Vista ***ed up, so thought ah i'll stick windows xp on it.

Stick the windows disk in, syas cant find hard drive!

Run a partition software (in dos) says cant find the hard drive.

Took harddrive out and plugged it in to my PC, windows finds it, but cant format it.

Used partition software to make a partition on the hard drive, pluged it back in to the laptop, laptop says no bootable partition.

I have ran every program in my partiton software (totallying about 20 hours now, of low level formating, creating bootable partition etc) but still when i put in windows disk it says hard drive not found, with out a disk in it say no bootable partition!

I thought it might be a SATA/RAID drive problem, so i used my windows disk which hard all the RAID drivers already installed on it, but still no luck.

If any one can help it would be great.

Thanks.

When did you buy your laptop?

lordatrox = Let's see what will he say about when did he buy it. I fix people's computers in real life too. 50 dollars per one computer... And also I graduated from my university.

[Orphan]

Wait wait wait, calm down


Boot up the laptop, go into the Bios and disable Sata Native on the hard disk. Or if that option is not available you should have an IDE option, choose that.

Problem solved .

Make sure you can get WinXP drivers for it though lol.

[t1nk]

i got a laptop with vista on i got so frustrated with it i broked it

took about 20 mins to start up and about an hour to shut down unless you crashed it, wouldnt run any games at all only ones it did were in slow motion>.< wouldnt run mir at all in any way no matter what i tried.

VISTA IS WANK

[Orphan]

Wait wait wait, calm down


Boot up the laptop, go into the Bios and disable Sata Native on the hard disk. Or if that option is not available you should have an IDE option, choose that.

Problem solved .

Make sure you can get WinXP drivers for it though lol.

Also if this still doesn't work, if your laptop has a decent Bios you should have a Diagnostics Utility that you can test the HDD with.

If you have give it a test and see if the HDD passes or fails, as it it could be faulty.

[Lone]

Wait wait wait, calm down


Boot up the laptop, go into the Bios and disable Sata Native on the hard disk. Or if that option is not available you should have an IDE option, choose that.

Problem solved .

Make sure you can get WinXP drivers for it though lol.

bah you beat me to it >.< i had this issue recently with a drive it was a case of trying to tell vista that the drive does actually exist because the system doesnt have the basic files to look inthe right place for it by default - or something along those lines

[lapta]

Its a HP laptop aboout 4 months old.

Vista claimed that the serial number i was using was invalded, even tho its the serial printed on the bottom of the laptop.

The BIOS offers no option apart from formating the hard drive, which i did (took 8 hours...)

[Orphan]

What HP model is it? We use HP notebooks at work and I'm always setting them up (thats how I found the Bios option cause I had the same problem).


But if you've formatted it to an NTFS partition, chances are Windows XP will still not see the disk because it doesn't have Sata drivers in the setup.

You'd either need to load them via a floppy disk or USB pen drive but I'm sure there must be a Sata/IDE option in the Bios somewhere!