i need help. trying to downgrade to xp. not finding HD

[Thoris]

I just got my Dell 17 inch Laptop with a nivida Geforce 8600 Gt 256\ mg graphic card. I amtrying to Upgrade to Xp from vista but it wont let me. It tells me it cant find my Hard Drive. I went into Bios to disable the flash thing and it still wont work. Any help would be great


Thankyou

[Kailea]

Re: i need help. trying to downgrade to xp. not finding HD

On those mass prdouced systems, never really a good idea to try and downgrade, if its a laptop.


Is the copy of XP disk you using SP1 or SP2 or just plain XP?

sounds like Windows setup cant find the HDD because its a SATA drive

your going to have to find the drivers for that HDD off dells site, or the maker of that HDD, then place them on a Floppy (get a USB floppy drive) and load them manually during XP setup

[Thoris]

Re: i need help. trying to downgrade to xp. not finding HD

is there any way of doing it with out me buying a floppy drive

[Kailea]

Re: i need help. trying to downgrade to xp. not finding HD

you could try placing the driver on a CD or USB drive, but at least in my experience that I have had with early XP CDs, that wont work

might want to wait though, someone else might have a better idea

[Tickmeoff]

Re: i need help. trying to downgrade to xp. not finding HD

Vista and XP don't play nice together. If you are wanting to replace the current Vista installation with XP you will probably have to format the hard drive first. If you want both they will have to be on seperate hard drives.