Hi There

First of all happy new year to everybody, i hope that 2009 is a good year.

So down to business

I have an Acer Extensa laptop with an oem version of xp pro. As per usual it has all the software supplied and pre-installed. However i use it for dj'ing and would like to wipe everything and install my own copy of xp. I have made a recovery disck of the original system as back up and have all the required drivers

The problem is that the machine wont let me install. I suspect that there is something preventing this.

This is what i have done
entered bios and set cd drive as first boot
restarted with xp disk in
all the usual startup messages came up
then i got this message
'setup did not find any hd drives installed on your computer'
Make sure any hdd's are properly powered and connected and that any disk related hardware is properly configured. setup cannot continue.

This is strange since i was using my laptop 10 minutes before i tried this so i can confrim that i have a hdd connected and working.

Am i to assume that acer have planted a code somewhere to prevent os installation or mask the hdd somehow.

An interesting one

Regards
Dave

Do you see the HD in the BIOS Setup Menu?

Am i to assume that acer have planted a code somewhere to prevent os installation or mask the hdd somehow.

Yes. There's two possibilities.

One, you'll need to find the bios.inf file (for that machine) and slipstream it into a copy of your XP CD.

I have made a recovery disck of the original system as back up and have all the required drivers

It should be on the OEM setup media.

Two, it (the coding) may be embedded in the HD MBR.

If you've already formatted the hard disk, you could try this (using your retail XP CD to boot);

First, boot to the Windows XP recovery console. Description of the Windows XP Recovery Console for advanced users (See Option 2 or 3)

(This is not a required step, just make sure you have the correct hard disk if there is more than one hard disk in the machine.)

Inside the recovery console, type the command:

Map

and hit ENTER.

This will show what drives are on the system. The primary drive always starts as Disk 0, then Disk 1, and so on. You can also use diskpart to see what drives are on the system.

When ready, type:

mkdiskraw #
(# is the number of the drive you want to clear)

Hit ENTER.

This command will nuke your data, filesystem, partition table, and MBR all in one move.

After you've done this, start the clean install on the blank hard disk.

Post back with your results and any further questions.

Thanks for the input Dan
Im not rushing as i have some unexpected gigs this month and need my laptop running with all my playlists etc etc intact.

However my i.t guy at work suggested it may ba a sata controller + driver problem as he has the same problem with a bunch of new laptops for work.

He suggests that xp does not have sata drivers and my machine has reference to intel sata controllers in device manager.

does this help at all

cheers
Dave

Update

Well my friendly I.T gut at worked has come up with the goods. He had a quick look at my laptop, found a sata controller in device manager, went to acer and downloaded the required drivers and slipstreamed them into a copy of my retail xp disc

Straight away it worked, setup found my hdd and recognised the partitions.

As the disc is partitioned i should be able to install on the second partition which is empty and is a storage area.

He told me that majority of new machines both desktop and notebook have sata drives these days and that it will be an increasing problem for those wanting to keep xp unless they know what to do.

Apparently vista has sata drivers as standard.

As soon as i have sucessfully installed xp i will post back some results

Cheers
Dave

Ah, the SATA twist. Never occured to me as an issue as you stated you had all your hardware drivers backed up. Thanks for the update.

As the disc is partitioned i should be able to install on the second partition which is empty and is a storage area.

Keep in mind that if you install to the second partition, then later decide to "clear" the first partition and use it for "storage, your boot files (which gives the choice of which O/S to boot to) will still be in that first partition. Thus "clearing/wiping" it will have to be done manually. (Unless you go with a clean/fresh install to the first partition.)