XP won't see the hard drives but vista will

[Evilvito]

I got Vista but want xp so i can multi-task. I pop in a windows xp cd and when the setup goes to the the place you see the partitions, Mines won't see. It will show 4 Unkown discs and when i press anything a blue screen of death comes. I put in the vista cd and it can read it. Tried differnet cds. I got a sata hard drive but it didn't come with a floppy and the site doesn't have it. Plz help

Edited June 29, 2007 by Evilvito

[DonDamm]

It sounds like your missing a SATA driver which you'd need during the first part of setup from the XP disk. That is accessed by pressing F6 at the beginning while it's loading.

Without more info about your system and configuration we can't tel lyou much. However, I can tell you that if you do install XP AFTER Vista, you will end up overwriting the MBR and Vista won't boot until you repair that. Dual booting in general isn't really a very good idea, especially considering the reasonable cost of a decent hard disk these days.

You say you want to install XP so you can "multi-task"?? What in heaven's name are you talking about? Do you think you can't "multi-task" in Vista? Do you really understand what "multi-task" means? I don't mean to sound snide, but what you say really doesn't make any sense.

If you really want to be able to run both OSs at the same time (which you can't do with a dual boot), then I suggest using a VM. If you are running Vista, I'll bet you have at least 1GB and maybe 2. Memory is very reasonable at the moment so I'd invest in another 1 GB module if you only have one anyway. You can then assign a decxent 512MB to an XP Virtual Machine and you'll have the best of both world's.

I like VMware, but MS also offer Virtual PC for free and then there's Virtual Box - also free, and any number of other open source projects like Bochs.

If you want the box mostly for gaming or something, then just wipe Vista and install Xp and start tweaking it. Vista's big and lumbering and takes a lot of resources, though it looks nice.

I just think you're asking for trouble with a dual boot.

[Evilvito]

The hard drive name is Seagate st320082 7AS hard drive

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?vgne...mp;locale=en-US

It has no driver so i can't put in nLite

I also don't have a floppy drve so theres no point in pressing f6 if you don't have the drives on a floppy which i Can't put in

Specs

Windows vista Ultimate(x64)

767 mb of ram

256 mb graphic card

Pentoum d 805 2.66 ghz

Edited June 29, 2007 by Evilvito

[nodiaque]

It's not sata drivers for you HD that you need but for your Sata controller. Check your mobo drivers website, there should be drivers for xp (because once your in xp, your drive won't be recognize if it wasn't at the setup).

You have SP2 on your cd if I'm correct since you're using NLite. Simply integrate those for sata controller.

As I said, no HD comme with cd/floppy for sata drivers. It's like saying that your speaker come with soundcard drivers