WINXP cant find drive when formatting?

[makotech222]

SO i have xp pro sp2 on a disc and when i try to install it, i get to the partition screen and it shows i have only one drive, with 2gb on it, in FAT format, which is my USB drive i have plugged in,then below it, it says theres an unknown disk in there, no drive is plugged in (or something like that). So, it wont let me reformat my main drive and install xp on it. I have vista x64 already on it and i wanna go back to XP.

When i use my Vista install disk, it can find the disk and format it easily. So would it be possible to format it using the vista disk, then restart with xp disk in and boot from there?

 

[edklite]

if your drive is sata you need to install drivers for it first.

 

[makotech222]

nope pretty sure its not. i bought it from Dell

 

[edklite]

so what? my dells for work all have sata drives.

 

[makotech222]

pretty sure is not sata. anyways could i format w/ vista cd or not?

 

[edklite]

I'm not sure, try asking in teh vista section but I'm pretty sure you can I don't see why not

 

[makotech222]

wow you were right i checked my bios and it said my HD is a SATA. sorry for doubting you. So now i gotta find drivers?

 

[edklite]

yes check your hdd manufacturer and they should have the drivers you need I think

 

[makotech222]

well i went to dell website, downloaded the drivers, then put em on floppy and botted xp disc and pressed f6. It brings up 4 different drivers to load, and i wasnt sure which one to pick. i did 2/4 and they both didnt work. im not sure if im even doing it right...

 

[edklite]

you will need the controller drivers also for you mombo, plus make sure you got the right drives. check the hdd manufacturer and not dell.

 

[makotech222]

what are the controller drivers? i checked around on HDD website and couldnt really see anything new.

 

[edklite]

no here is how it works, your motherboard (mombo) has controllers to control SCSI/ATA drives.

those controllers have their own drivers.

then you got your SATA hard drive which has its own drivers also.

during install (F6) you will first need the control drivers to install.

dell gave you Cd's with your PC, one of them should have those mombo controller drivers.

 

[makotech222]

I got the sata drivers to work!!! i guess i was picking the wrong 1/4. I got XP installed and everything is working great!!! thanks alot soooooo much for help

 

[edklite]

lol congrats now you can guide others with installing sata drives

good luck