Okay:
My bud's a noob and downloaded this on advice from someone in order to get his Nano working. He also blew away his Vista-virus OS on his POS HP laptop.
He brings it to me and after much searching, I've got all the drivers req'd to upgrade to XP Pro.
Install disc reports he has "no hard drives present"
I pop in a copy of Acronis Disc Director 9 and boot it in Full mode: told no drives are present.

Try it in Safe mode and the drive is viewed, I build partitions, get a black screen and a stack dump.... and pooter reboots.
I did a low level disk diagnostic, 2 + hours for this 230gb drive, and it chex out 100%.

I'm at a loss as my Acronis utilities have never failed me.....
Can anyone give any insights or suggestions so I can get this laptop outta my home asap?

Thanx a bunch kids!

You probably need the appropriate SATA drivers. When installing XP you'll have to press F6 at the prompt to load the drivers off of the floppy drive. Since most laptops since 2000 don't HAVE floppy drives you'll probably have to slipstream an XP disc with the drivers you need. USB floppy drive won't work either.

So basically you need to start by finding out what chipset the laptop is using and getting the appropriate RAID/AHCI drivers.

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

Thanx but I don't think his drive is Sata. Wasn't reported as such in th bios.....
I'm also not seeing how the chipset on the mobo needs attention when it was the app he got from this site that seems to have done some kinda number on his drive.......

The point being that you're trying to install XP on an HP laptop new enough to have Vista on it, meaning that it is most likely a SATA drive running on a SATA controller new enough that Acronis is confused about how to talk to it and XP install needs appropriate drivers for before it will even detect that there is a hard drive at all.

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

USB floppy drive usually works fine. The trick is usually to enable legacy USB support in BIOS.

Here's the dealio:
I have an XP black disc. It installed fine to my latest precision, even tho the disc is YEARS old.
That poot has only SATA.
But No prob Bob.
This is different. NO app will allow any sort of format, let alone see it most of the time.
I realize this is a HugePain pooter that's "optimized" to run the VistaResourceVirus... that could be his problem/mistake.....
Thanx a bunch for the insights.....

Your Precision may have "emulate IDE" option enabled in its BIOS, which fooled the XP installer.

Your laptop does not.

Use a USB floppy with SATA drivers. Piece of cake, really. We deal with this mess every time we install a Windows 2003 Server on a RAID machine.

I suggest to make a slip stram xp /2003 disk with WinLite. It's easy, and install it. it shoul recocnised your hd with the driver in it, without floppy usb or pcmia.

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Best Regards,
e-win

Hey all,
Thanx a bunch for the suggestions. He's got XP Pro running on that HPiece of crap and good to go. He's actually of the opinion that vista ran apps quicker, tho EVERY benchmark I've read sez that with it's latest Service repairPack, it's still only on[i]on par[/i] at best and sucking hind tit, as expected.....
I don't know how to close this thread so if anyone had advice on THAT?
Shweet.
Thanx again.

So what solved your problem?

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

Handing it off to someone with more time to fek around!

AKA "taken to a pro".

No, I just didn't have time setting up a workstation and getting a divorce and looking for work......
Think he took it to a bud.....