When I try to instal a windows vista on my computer it says that I should load the hard drive's driver. I don't have such a thing and I can't find it anywhere. I have a Seagate ST3160812AS Barracuda 7200.9 160 Gb. Between Xp and Vista I can run only Vista on it. Now I don't have any operating system installed on that computer and I'm trying for about 2 weeks to get it done. Can you please help me ?!

try another version of vista

You sure your HD isn't bad? You could try a low-level format and then try to install, I am assuming you don't mind loosing any data already on the disk.

When installing XP or Vista you get the option to load third party drivers for unknown devices. I think it's F6 just after the start of any version of Windows, once you press this you will have to supply the drivers for the Windows installation. This will make Windows recognise the hdd from then on.

Can you press f10 to get to the HP recovery screens?

You need to find the drivers for the controller card.

Put the drivers onto a floppy drive. When the software asks for the drivers, use those drivers to let the OS know where to look for the hard drives.

I'm not sure if vista can load drivers off of a USB thumb drive. I havn't actually tried it yet.

Check Maxtor for the drivers you need.

Hi, you be to be sure that your unit of this CD-DVD working correctly, of being like that, must check that both CD's are well-read correctly, once overcome this, you can to install without problems the operating system Vista to your equipment

The reason it is showing "no hard disk" is because you have a SATA hard drive, and there is no SATA support on the WS2003 software, so it doesn't even "see" the drive when trying to install.

What you can do is download SATA drivers for your hard drive to your machine. Once downloaded and/or extracted, restart the installation but choose F6 to load "SCSI or 3rd party drivers", then point to the downloaded drivers.

Your installation will then load the SATA drivers, thereby recognizing the hard drive and you'll be able to successfully install Windows.

Hope this helps - remember to rate :)

Acer Extensa supports two model of HDD installation 1) AHCI and 2) SATA.

Windows Vista get installs on both but for Windows XP you need to Enable SATA option.

For that go into Bios, Change option of Hard Disk from AHCI to SATA. After that you can install both XP as well as Vista.

Try it, and mail me update: [email protected]

i am using Windows XP on Acer Extensa-4220

Hi,

It is possible that your hard drive is a SATA and therefore not readily readable by 98, XP but surprised not even by Vista. In any case, since you would still prefer to run XP (due to other software compatibility issues), pls press F6 when prompted by the XP installer. Additionally, you would need to have ready in a floppy the appropriate SATA drivers for your motherboard. They maybe downloaded from the motherboard manufacturer's website or possibly in the installer/driver CD that came with the PC.

Other than the above, it is also possible that you may have some issues with the availability of XP drivers for the other devices for that computer specially if it is branded.

Hope this be of initial help/idea. Pls post back how things turned up or should you need additional information.

Good luck and kind regards.

Thank you for using FixYa.

i don't believe you can co install two operating system on one computer, but one can always hope