Error Message:Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your system

Error Message:Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your system but with acer aspire t650 what can i do

Does it have a sata drive?? If so you have to insert the sata driver by pressing F6 at the beginning of the windows install!!

The needed driver should be on a cd and/or floppy supplied with the pc!!

If you dont have them, then the acer webiste is the place to look!!!!

Hi i am having similar problems since I have sata drive. But I have laptop and not a desktop. So when I hit F6, the setup asks me to insert manufacturer disk in the A: drive (I guess floppy drive). But I don't have a floppy drive in my laptop. So what should I do? I even tried removing the XP cd, while in middle of the setup, and entering the Dell Drivers CD. But it seems not to accept it.

My system info
Dell Inspiron 1520
SATA 160GB Hdd
vista home basic edition

This problem of having the device drivers on a FDD seems to have been ignored by the board makers. All you can do it get yourself a USB FDD and use that. You also need another machine to copy the drivers from the motherboard driver CD to a blank Floppy disk. You might have to get the drivers for Vista from the net so better you do this first to save time.

Unfortunately shashin011 your problem is entirely different. The A drive is reserved for a floppy so yes, its asking for a floppy disk. The fact your lappy doesnt have one is an oversight on Dell's part. You will probably have to contact Dell to resolve your problem.

Thanks for your replies.

Albertlionheart: If i can use a USB Floppy drive, can't I just use a USB flash device or any other USB storage device?

I can get the drivers from the dell site, that is not a problem.

You are able to format a usb flash drive as a bootable floppy drive, not sure how its done tho.

Thanks all for your suggestions

Do let me know, if you get any ideas. Thanks again.

Should be some useful info here - http://www.google.co.uk/search?sour... usb flash drive into a bootable floppy&meta=

Thanks rik.

OK, If i do make a USB flash device bootable, what should I do while XP setup, when it asks me to specify the additional mass storage device (CDROM, etc) after I have pressed F6 at start.

Should I use this usb drive at that time, or should I first boot from USB drive, install the SATA drivers and then run XP setup from bootable XP cd?

Probably your first suggestion.

Ok. Cool! thanks

Let me try this and I will let you guys know, if I was successfull. I never thought installing XP on pre-installed vista would have been such a pain.

read the whole link at the top of the "Windows forum" going to Vista can be fun, and may not be the best. "that is a as of yet" as widows VISTA will get better as time goes on.

That is true nickc, Vista will definately get better as time passes, but they are targeting wrong people for testing. The customers are investing real money. Probably this is not the thread to discuss this.

I found couple of links to make USB bootable
http://www.weethet.nl/english/hardware_bootfromusbstick.php

http://www.thepcspy.com/articles/hardware/bootable_usb_flash_drive