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Trying to get rid of preinstalled Vista, but no luck....

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Last response: in Windows XP
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Hey

I have a laptop with vista preinstalled on it, Acer Aspire 5920G that would be.
It also has a lot of junk from Acer installed on it, and I want to get rid of it.

So I want format everything and install a fresh windows xp on it

I have a working Windows XP cd (used it multiple times)

But when I boot from the CD and I select the options: install windows xp or repair windows xp, I get an error on both:

The setup couldn't find any harddrive devices (badly translated from my dutch OS, sorry)

Please install something that the manufacturer gave you

Press F3 to exit setup

So it isn't working :S, he can't find my HDD?

Could anyone tell me what to do? I'm pretty stuck right now :p 

Thanks!!!

More about : rid preinstalled vista luck

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Try to boot into the recovery console or a command prompt.
While there type
format c:
and I think it will work for you.
It has been a while since I have done it but Im pretty certain that is the way.

First, it didn't even showed the "Boot from CD" option,
I went in the (what i think is) BIOS and changed the boot order or something to the CD first

Now I boot from the cd,

This is the exact error I get (mind some translation mistakes):

Quote:
Setup cannot find a HDD station on your computer.

Make sier that the disks are activated, and connected correctly to the computer and that the hardwareconfiguration for the disks is correct. You should use a program, provided by the manufacturer for this

Setup cannot continue. Push F3 to end the setup.


I didn't see any OS install option in the BIOS

This is what happened when typing "format c:" in the command prompt:
Quote:
C:\Windows\system32\format c:
The type of filesystem is NTFS.
Insert the current name of the volume for station C: ACER

WARNING:
ALL DATA ON THE NON-INTERCHANGEABLE STATION C: WILL BE DELETED!
Do you want to continue formatting (J/N)? J
formatting 114372 MB
The systempartition cannot be formatted.


thanks!
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first you need to get the ACHI drivers for the SATA fron Acer and slipstream them onto a XP (use N-Lite) installation CD, then download The Ultimate Boot CD and wipe( write zero's) the HDD before you try to install XP on that drive, regular format wil not remover the core file and it wil not let you install XP, the drivers for the SATA so the mother board so you can see the HDD are not in the XP CD

slipstreaming is adding something(driver or service packs) to the installation disk, use N-Lite to do this, its free and you need the original installation disk, put the disk in the CD drive and open N-Lite and has a bunch of options, pick add drivers, the create the disk in ISO format, then you can use your burner program to make a new installation disk, use this disk to install the OS, good luck

Wel for the slipstreaming part there are some problems:
1) I don't use the original windows xp cd, I use a modified ISO (TinyXP = XP with all the crap left out of it = super fast running)
2) I tried that slipstreaming thing myself, but I can't find certain maps in this ISO of TinyXP

So can that N-lite program handle this non-standard CD also to slipstream? Or does it only work on official windows versions?

It would be great if it did work :D 
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