Installing XP problem

[rimbo1968]

Hi all. My first post here, so hope you can help.

I've got an old HP 530 lap top with Vista on it and its basically much too slow. So my cunning plan was to install a bulk standard WINXP on it and remove Vista altogether. I've got XP on my HP510 and it works fine.

Whilst trying to install XP it goes through a number of set up processes and then grinds to a halt saying "Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer". The laptop works fine (albeit very slowly with Vista), so I'm guessing this cant be the case? It also gives the same message when I try and repair.

Any ideas on how to fix this?

Any assistance would be much appreciated as I unfortunately cant afford anything new at the moment and this would mean the kids would stop fighting over the one working household computer!!

Thanks in advance

 

[Rabbit01]

Looks like the HP530 has a SATA hard drive. You'll need to download the driver from HP:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsuppor...&swLang=8&mode=2&taskId=135&swItem=ob-51454-1

Click on the tab that says Installation Instructions. It'll explain the process of creating a thumb drive w/ the necessary driver for the SATA HDD. Once the drivers are installed, you should be able to install XP.

 

[BeastMode 17]

SATA AHCI Controller Driver

I did some research and found a driver that is an enhancement for Windows Vista that allows your computer to recognize the hard drive while trying to install an OS . Due to the fact that this is my first post I am not allowed to post links on the page yet but I will tell you where to go to get the driver you need. Go to the HP website, then click on the Support and Drivers tab, then click on the drivers and software tab, enter your product name into the spot given, go through the list of products until you find HP 530 Notebook PC when you do click on it, then select the operating system currently on the laptop, then go through the list of different driver categories until you find the one labeled Operating Sytems-Enhancements and QFE's, then find the second driver from the top of the list labeled Intel SATA AHCI controller, click on it and once it takes you to the next page click the black download button. Once you've done this try to install XP again and it should work this time. Sorry its such a long post but I am not yet allowed to post links.

 

[rimbo1968]

Hi - many thanks for your help. According to the instructions, i need an external floppy drive? Is there any other way of doing it? USB stick / external HD etc?

Thanks

Shaun

 

[Rabbit01]

Toward the bottom of the instruction, it says

NOTE: The driver installation media can be a diskette (floppy), CD, DVD, or USB Flash drive. If you are not using the diskette created by the SoftPaq, after running the SoftPaq .exe file, copy the files from c:\swsetup\sp36131 to the driver installation media that you will be using.

So you should be able to copy them to whatever you'll be using.