Trouble Installing XP on SATA drive

[pooccini]

Full disclosure: I am not very computer-savvy.
Tried to do format + clean install of XP Pro on new HP desktop that came loaded with Vista (which I hate and which freezes up constantly even tho' I reduced the number of Startup programs to bare minimum) but failed, probably because HDD is a SATA model. Had to reinstall Vista, which restored me to where I started, but want to try again. Have seen postings about adding necessary drivers to XP via a floppy to allow XP to work in cases like this, but the HP machine has no floppy drive. I could pull and install a floppy from an older Dell desktop if necessary. Also unsure of where to find updated drivers for the SATA HDD, which some postings say must be done. Any help most appreciated; please try to make instructions so a tech novice could understand them. Thanks!

 

[Rick]

I could pull and install a floppy from an older Dell desktop if necessary. Also unsure of where to find updated drivers for the SATA HDD, which some postings say must be done.

The issue there is your system board probably doesn't have a floppy connector - so even if you have a floppy drive and a cable - there will be nothing to connect it to.

The easiest solution here is to buy a USB floppy drive. Most of them will work using the XP install to get your SATA drivers installed. The usual going rate is about $20. The second choice is to slipstream your SATA drivers into a custom XP disc. Needless to say, this is more difficult. nlite makes it relatively simple, but there's a lot of things that can go wrong for someone who isn't used to this stuff.

If you can give us the the model number of your system, we can look up the details and point you to the appropriate driver site for SATA floppy drivers.

 

[gbhall]

alternatively, you could partition your drive into C; and D: (you can do this without destroying Vista with appropriate free software). The D: which will become your backup drive or data drive, can be used to store the necessary SATA drivers for use at the start of install of XP

 

[pooccini]

The issue there is your system board probably doesn't have a floppy connector - so even if you have a floppy drive and a cable - there will be nothing to connect it to.

The easiest solution here is to buy a USB floppy drive. Most of them will work using the XP install to get your SATA drivers installed. The usual going rate is about $20. The second choice is to slipstream your SATA drivers into a custom XP disc. Needless to say, this is more difficult. nlite makes it relatively simple, but there's a lot of things that can go wrong for someone who isn't used to this stuff.

If you can give us the the model number of your system, we can look up the details and point you to the appropriate driver site for SATA floppy drivers.

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The machine is a HP A6109n. Motherboard is ASUS M2N68-LA. If I'm reading Device Mgr correctly, the hard drive is a "ST332082 OAS SCSI Disk Device". Thanks

 

[Rick]

Check your PM inbox.

I made a self-extracting archive for you that should make things simple. It will work like this:

1. Insert a blank floppy diskette. Make certain there is nothing you want on it.
2. Run the .exe file I sent you
3. It will format your floppy diskette!
4. Next, it will extract (what should be) the correct driver to the diskette from the .exe archive
5. That should be it!