Pavilion dv6 notebook doesn't like Windows XP

[bsmith_52]

I had troubles with Vista Business on this notebook/laptop. The system got corrupted and and VERY slow. I was unale to speed it up by cleaning it up (tried delete cookies, defrag, Avast, Malwarebytes, etc.). So I scrubbed my hard drive (low level format, partition, format; 80 mb bad on 160 gb drive), and tried to load XP. Every time the XP setup would run, rigit after it loaded the initial set of drivers, it would come up with the "blue screen of death" asking me to run CHKDSK. I had problems with my disk drive (will read CD or DVD's, but will no longer write), so I created a bootabe XP USB, in case the optiral drive was not able to access a part of the boot CD. This time XP told me that it couldn't find a hard drive. I tried the Ultimate Boot CD and tried to access the C: drive from DOS. Again, it found no hard drive.

One might think that I had a bad hard drive. Yet the disk check utility in the bios had no problems checking it. In addition, I was able to load Linux on the drive, no problem. I have gotten simular results when I performed the above on a different hard drive.

What gives? A bad spot in main memory that Windows needs to boot with, but Linux dosn't need?

Thanks for your help.

(48 hours later)
OK, so I took my own advice. I did a bios check of the memory. All OK. And just to make sure: I tried to install XP with the 1 gb stick alone. Same failure. I tried the install XP with the 2 gb stick alone. Same failure.

Where are we at? CD OK, hard drive OK, memroy OK. Is there a flakey motherboard lurking?

Back to the drawing board....

 

[bsmith_52]

This was reposted under the motherboard forum. There I found the problem was due to a lack of sata drivers in XP. Solution is to find the drivers for the notebook motherboard and incorporate them in a slipstream disk. See:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Install-Windows-XP-On-SATA-Without-a-Floppy-F6-47807.shtml

Thanks for your help!

 

[Davidnj11]

You could try setting your Hard Drive mode to IDE or Compatibility, whichever your bios says, and install Windows XP than. That's what I did with my Laptop. I decided to multiboot xp and windows 8.