I entered BIOS and CHANGED BOOT location to cd. I'm trying to install Xp on a brand new laptop and removing Vista...

But new problem... I get an error MESSAGE in the BIOS page once it starts to load XP... is this a BIOS setup issue?

"Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer.
Make sure your hard disk drives are powered on and properly connected to your computer, and that any disk-related configuration is correct.
Setup cannot continue."

Can I fix this issue with a BIOS option change?

is your drive perhaps ATTACHED to a SATA RAID controller? I've heard (never dealt with one personally) that you need a driver on a floppy to get XP to recognize any drives attached to these.It's a SATA all right but then so is my desktop and that installed XP no problem... ?

Very early on in the setup process you will see a message at the bottom of the screen "Press F6 to install SATA/RAID drivers".....press it and have your machine's SATA driver CD ready.Thanks,

I'll go and download some drivers...

If the machine came with Windows and all drivers for all hardware installed and no setup disks (why would they do that!) which piece of information do I search for drivers on? e.g. do I look for the Mainboard SATA drivers online, or that specific brand and model laptop SATA drivers?

You should get them from your MBoard manuf.'s site...Problem solved.

After searching for the Laptop specs, then the mainboard manufacturer, then the drivers, and pulling my hair out... COMING up dead every time...

Just thought I would log on with my solution... I entered the BIOS and just simply disabled SATA.

I would rather have XP and no SATA than Vista with SATA any day...

Thanks all for your posts... I may be back once XP tries to find all the new hardware...

ALso, HP have a great live online chat with a technician which solved this for me in about three minutes... start there. chad, from another of your posts on a related topic,if this XP installation is the same one as referred to in the other post (an xp program that was used and installed on another computer) your troubles are probably just beginning.truenorthyou are correct.

XP on the Presario c793vu does not have drivers for the following:

Ethernet Controller
PCI Device
SM Bus Controller
USB controller
unknown device 1
unknown device 2
video controller
video controller vga compatible

a nightmare!

Now I need to decide if I try to get around all these new problems... or just go back to Vista. And how do i go back to Vista when no installation disk comes with the new laptop? You need to contact Compaq and have them ship you a MBoard Driver installation CD.....
Until then it doesn't matter which OS you want to run you will continue to have issues.Quote from: patio on August 06, 2008, 08:55:03 PM

You need to contact Compaq and have them ship you a MBoard Driver installation CD.....
Until then it doesn't matter which OS you want to run you will continue to have issues.