I bought a new laptop that had vista. I wanted to install XP instead. Gateway told me I would need to write 0's to my hard drive which I did. This didn't solve the problem. When I run XP it gets to the part where I have to hit "R" for repair or "Enter" to set up. When I hit Enter I get this "Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer." Thanks for any help.
Vista downgrade prob
- Thread starter mcintire21
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I know how to get into my BIOS. What order should the boot sequence be in? When I restart w/ XP in the drive it says Setup is loading files at the bottom of the screen and then it says windows if starting setup. It goes to the screen w/ the R for repair and Enter to setup. When I hit enter I get the message about no drives found. I went into bios and under the BOOT tab put CD ROM drive at the top. Other than that please tell me what else you need to know. Thanks again.
You did what you need to do to make the CD-ROM drive the first in boot order.
What you describe seems fairly common with VISTA machines that are being changed.
Do you have a floppy drive in your computer? If so, do you have access to an old Windows 98 startup/boot disc?
Otherwise, I would tell you to go here if you could see the drive.,, then have you tell us what you find at Start-> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management ->
What I suspect has happened is that you have deleted the information that identifies the drive during the processes you went throuigh. I suspect, but to not know for sure, that if you download the drive setup tools from the website of the manufacturer of that drive, and run the low level setup, you could get your hard drive accessed and setup. All drive manufacturers, expect Toshiba, have that sort of software available. You should be able to download it to an ISO install or to a floppy disk install, or even a USB flash drive or pen drive... then use that to setup this missing drive.
I suspect you have a SATA Drive, and drive manufacturesk have software that deals with the issue you describe.
Good luck. Please let us know what you discovered, and how you got it working.
What you describe seems fairly common with VISTA machines that are being changed.
Do you have a floppy drive in your computer? If so, do you have access to an old Windows 98 startup/boot disc?
Otherwise, I would tell you to go here if you could see the drive.,, then have you tell us what you find at Start-> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management ->
What I suspect has happened is that you have deleted the information that identifies the drive during the processes you went throuigh. I suspect, but to not know for sure, that if you download the drive setup tools from the website of the manufacturer of that drive, and run the low level setup, you could get your hard drive accessed and setup. All drive manufacturers, expect Toshiba, have that sort of software available. You should be able to download it to an ISO install or to a floppy disk install, or even a USB flash drive or pen drive... then use that to setup this missing drive.
I suspect you have a SATA Drive, and drive manufacturesk have software that deals with the issue you describe.
Good luck. Please let us know what you discovered, and how you got it working.
I called gateway again and they couldn't really help install another OS. So I ended up just going back to Vista. I've looked on the internet and other forums and other people seem to have the same problem when trying to downgrade. I've figured out how to make everything work w/ vista so I'll give it a chance. Thanks anyway.
Tammy
Posts: 19 +0
i have a gateway I bought this year too and ran into this same problem. After a week and much ado I was able to go back to Windows XP becuase so many of my programs are not compatialbe with Vista. But it takes streamlining your windows xp cd with service pack 2 and your hard drive drives all on the same cd. If you can find the drivers on gatway web site you can do it. I did. The only problem I have is I have four items I can't find drivers for because I don't know what they are.
I finally just paid my local shop $30 or $40 to do it for me, including finding all the drivers. When I picked it up he said he was going to start charging double that because it was such a pain and took a while. So I'm back w/ XP and everythings working great.
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