Hard drive not found :(

Mar 24, 2018
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I recently bought an old Compaq Mini 311c-1101sa notebook. This I wanted to use for all my windows XP stuff as my main rig is running Windows 10.

When I bought the notebook it had a Linux distro installed. I hooked up my external DVD drive and inserted my Windows XP disc. During the setup, it says it cannot find any hard drives and I cannot progress any further.

I am guessing Windows needs a driver to access my hard drive which from what i can find out is a SATA controller.

Can anyone help me out in getting this to work plz.
 
Solution
You need to have the SATA driver for nVidia Ion handy on a floppy. It's probably unreasonable to expect the install disc for an OS from 2001 would include a driver from 2009.

Right after XP installation starts, there will be a message on the bottom of the screen to "Press F6 if you need to install a third party SCSI or RAID driver." Unfortunately, USB flash drive support wasn't added until Vista but a USB floppy drive does work fine.

Or you could try to slipstream the driver into your XP disc.
in the BIOS, is there an option for "legacy", "IDE", or "compatible" mode for the SATA controller? that would work.
 
You need to have the SATA driver for nVidia Ion handy on a floppy. It's probably unreasonable to expect the install disc for an OS from 2001 would include a driver from 2009.

Right after XP installation starts, there will be a message on the bottom of the screen to "Press F6 if you need to install a third party SCSI or RAID driver." Unfortunately, USB flash drive support wasn't added until Vista but a USB floppy drive does work fine.

Or you could try to slipstream the driver into your XP disc.
 
Solution