Installing Windows on a Laptop with SATA Hard Drive
by atomike on May.11, 2010, under Computer Software
Intalling Windows on a computer with a SATA hard drive may require drivers and|or changing the SATA mode in the BIOS.
Senario 1: You insert the Windows CD and the hard drive is displayed, ready for installation.
In this case you have a good chance of having a sucessful installation. Sometimes you may get a blue screen after the installation, if this happens follow the steps on senario 2.
Senario 2: Hard drive is not dectected.
In this case download the SATA/IDE driver for you motherboard. The driver is sometimes a standalone driver or it comes with the chipset drivers.
- For Vista and 7, place these drivers in a flash drive, insert the flash drive in the computer you will install Windows on, and when you get to the formatting options screen select Load Driver. Locate the drivers on your flash drive, select it and press Next.
- For XP, install a Floppy disk drive and place the SATA/IDE drivers in a floppy drive. Insert the Windows XP CD and press F6. Follow the instructions on the setup to add the SATA/IDE drivers. In case you do not have a floppy, then you need to create a slipstream cd using nlite.
In the rare event installing the drivers still gives you a blue screen, and you already scanned your ram using Memtest, and tested your hard drive with the vendor’s diagnostic utility, then the problem might be related to the version of Windows (i.e Reatail vs OEM, SP1 vs SP3, etc). Different versions of windows can be made using nlite.
