XP Pro on a new Gateway laptop...

[mhilts]

Hello all, cool site. Newbie here. I have a new Gateway MX8711 that came w/ Vista Home Premium. I have a few 'issues' with Vista and I want to dump it for XP Pro, which I have a legit CD & number for. The problem is, when I boot from the XP CD it can't find the sata disk in the Gateway. I hit 'F6' when prompted during XP Setup to load sata drivers, but I can't load them because it will only allow loading via the floppy and there isn't one in this laptop. Do I need a newer XP Pro CD that has sata drivers alreay installed? Help!!!

Mark

 

[The_Other_One]

You'll have to find an external floppy or something like that. I'm pretty sure even later version of XP still require floppies for drivers.

There's also some program that lets you add drives to your windows CD... Unfortunetly, I forgot what it was called...

 

[Buy-it PC]

You'll have to find an external floppy or something like that. I'm pretty sure even later version of XP still require floppies for drivers.

There's also some program that lets you add drives to your windows CD... Unfortunetly, I forgot what it was called...

He's right... you need an external floppy drive, unfortunately there isn't one available unless you go USB. But, the question is if the BIOS will detect the USB floppy upon post?

Being that most systems today don't use floppies any longer, except for the reason you are having, usually as a system builder we fight this all the time when it comes to XP.

But, you have to try a USB floppy drive. Attach it, and try it that way.

Otherwise, you are stuck by going back to VISTA... which I hate to tell you especially since you are having problems with it to begin with...

Find a USB floppy... I can see if you are interested if I can locate one for you.

Hope this helps!

 

[SuzukiGSX1300R08]

What type of problems are you having with vista? i run vista premium and i have not had one problem with it yet, been running it for almost three weeks now.