Unable to install Win XP on Toshiba portege R500

Make the SATA disk mode from ACHI to Compatibility in the BIOS. once its done without any problem you can make partitions, installa Windows XP. hope this helped you. thanks.

Ammar.

1. Download all XP drivers from Toshiba and store them on external harddrive or USB flashdrives
2. Prepare a XP Bootable CD with Intel Storage Drivers (ICH10 now) slipstreamed 
3. Boot the R500 with this CD and delete all the existing partitions (NTFS version from Vista is newer than XP, so installing XP on Vista version NTFS partition will crash)
4. Create just 1 primary partition for Windows XP (at least 20GB prefered but please don't use up all the space, use multiples of 1024MB, eg 30G = 40*1024=40960MB)
   
5. Once XP has installed and booted in, go to Computer Management, Storage -> Disk Management and change the CDROM's Driver letter to E (assuming you did what I said, originally the XP is on C, CD-ROM on D), then create a primary partition using up the rest of the hard disk space and label it with D.
6. Copy the "i386" folder from XP CD to D drive, this will get rid of "Please insert XP CD..." at later stage when you change do some system change.
7. install all neccessary drivers from the external HD/Flashdrive.
8. Please also disable "AutoPlay" feature on XP as there are so many Virus/Trojans that uses this AutoPlay feature to infect and spread. (XP Pro only: Start->Run, gpedit.msc, Enter. expand Administrative Templates and click System on both Group Policy roots, double click "Turn off Autoplay". Enable it on All drives..., OK)
9. Install your applications and do a windows update at the end.

I have toshiba portege R500 i want install winxp fist boot device not detect in externet dvd writter what can i do

I install XP to Portege M200 computers by the following method
Upgrade bios from a USB floppy (get upgrade file from Toshiba online)
after upgrade the computer can boot from the CD drive and install XP. The upgrade goes very slowly for the first half of the install but is installs properly.

At wht stage of the installation do you get the blue screen. Did you try installing from a different cd. Later during the installation you might have to log on to BIOS and there will be an option called disable SATA , you will have to disable it in case your laptop was shipped with Vista or else your hard disks will not get detected.

You will need a Vista disc to format the drive or try using the XP disc to format before you install. You may have bios and processor recognition problems running XP where a notebook is set up to run Vista