alright, here's the problem...

Windows was getting really slow so I decided to pull out my XP disk and do a full re-install....i rebooted my laptop and windows came up like normal....however, the next time I tried to load it up, it refused to load, and for some odd reason kept rejecting the XP install disk.......not knowing what to do, I downloaded Ubuntu and, after testing it out via Live CE, tried installing it on my laptop....now I have Ubuntu on my laptop but I still wanted XP back, since some of my favorite stuff doesn't work with Ubuntu, even using Wine....

So, I popped the XP disk back in, but every time I try to run the XP setup, it says that no hard drive is found....I'm pretty sure that the hard drive isn't failing, since Ubuntu will work with it....I'm thinking that either something with the laptop's BIOS is to blame, or that the Ubuntu installation maybe formatted the hard drive in a format windows doesn't recognize.....perhaps the windows CD is looking for a defined C: drive and can't find it??

Basically, I want my XP back....WITHOUT spending any money on a new hard drive, so please don't even bother suggesting that....


...you know what, I'll even throw a little prize into this....if someone gives me a solution that gets me back to XP, I'll vector whatever you want (with SOME limitations, of course.....)




*and yes, I realize that I'm probably an idiot for doing some of the things I did.....If i had a time machine, i'd go back in time and facepalm myself until i realized NOT to do what I did....


*EDIT: Problem Solved -- My laptop is now back on XP :D :D :D

And it turned out the problem was something no one mentioned...

Since it kept saying "Setup can not detect any hard drives" and such, i typed that into Yahoo and found something interesting....after going into the BIOS and changing the SATA setting to compatability mode, Windows installed with no problems :) :)

sadly, this means that no one gets a free vector....

What i would recommend is to download and burn Gparted...completely erase the harddrive...don't even bother formatting it to anything, and then try

Vegetano1 Wrote:uh,. i said to check your bios,. !!

but the problem was that resetting the bios, as you said, was actually what caused the problem in the first place...



and besides, I still have one vector to finish up, anyways...