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unable to install win xp
Name: texasam09 Date: March 12, 2009 at 09:13:26 Pacific OS: Windows XP Subcategory: Hard Drives
Comment:
I bought a new hard drive for my laptop and when i try to install win xp it says that i dont have one.bios does detects they hard drive. What should i do? Thanks
Name: grasshopper Date: March 12, 2009 at 09:24:32 Pacific
Reply:
First thing that comes to mind is, did you format it?
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Response Number 2
Name: texasam09 Date: March 12, 2009 at 09:34:54 Pacific
Reply:
i was going to format it when i was in win xp setup is there another way of doing this.
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Response Number 3
Name: jam Date: March 12, 2009 at 10:29:04 Pacific
Reply:
Is it an SATA HDD? If so, did you press F6 at the very beginning of the XP installation & install the SATA drivers?
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Response Number 4
Name: OtheHill Date: March 12, 2009 at 11:11:12 Pacific
Reply:
I may be wrong about this but I believe that any laptop that came with a SATA drive has native support built into the motherboard and there may not be the normal options like on a desktop.
texas
Boot into the BIOS and see if you have an option to use AHCI as a setting for your drive. Look at the link below for an explanation.
Name: DAVEINCAPS Date: March 12, 2009 at 12:34:06 Pacific
Reply:
What's the model number of the drive?
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Response Number 6
Name: texasam09 Date: March 13, 2009 at 05:44:49 Pacific
Reply:
It wont let me change from SATA to AHCI.
When I press F6 it says that it can not find a hard drive.
The hard drive is a
120GB NOTEBOOK LAPTOP HARD DRIVE DISK 2.5" SATA
Make: Fujitsu Model: MHZ2120BH G2
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Response Number 7
Name: OtheHill Date: March 13, 2009 at 06:34:38 Pacific
Reply:
Well, what capacity was the old hard drive? Google is not picking up any drive with that number.
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Response Number 8
Name: texasam09 Date: March 13, 2009 at 06:44:19 Pacific
Reply:
They old hard drive was also 120 GB and I corrected the model number
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Response Number 9
Name: OtheHill Date: March 13, 2009 at 07:15:30 Pacific
Reply:
The new drive is a SATA II model. It may not be backward compatible with a SATA I controller. I don't know if your laptop SATA controller is SATA I or II.
Most SATA II hard drives, at least 3.5" models, have a jumper on the back to throttle the drive to SATA I speeds for compatibility.
I searched the Fujitsu site and couldn't determine if your drive has a jumper or not. No mention of SATA I compatibility at all.
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Response Number 10
Name: texasam09 Date: March 13, 2009 at 07:36:35 Pacific
Reply:
Well do you have any recommendations of what else I can do? The laptop is a Gateway MX6920.
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Response Number 11
Name: OtheHill Date: March 13, 2009 at 07:59:52 Pacific
Reply:
If the hard drive isn't too difficult to access you could look to see if there is a jumper for SATA I.
I am not saying that is the problem for sure but the fact you can access the BIOS indicates the motherboard may be OK. It is possible the drive controller is bad or there are other settings you need to adjust. I am not very familiar with laptops but I believe the BIOS options are even more limited than desktop OEM computers. So, you probably don't have very many settings you can change.
Below is a link to the support page for your model. There are additional links available on that page. Contacting customer support may help.
Describe what made you decide the hard drive was defective in the first place?
If after contacting support you determine you can't use a SATA II drive and there is no jumper then below is a second link to a couple of SATA I drives that should work.
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