i need help with this SATA disabling

How-To Geek Forums » Windows Vista

Tip: Click Here to Update All Your PC's Outdated Drivers (Sponsored Link)

i need help with this SATA disabling

(10 posts)

Started 1 year ago by cwalk
Latest reply from cwalk
Topic Viewed 1686 times

View Accepted Answer

cwalk

Member

Posts: 14

im on a dell inspiron 1520 laptop, and when i go into its bios, nowhere do i see an option to disable sata so that when i try to install win xp, it doesnt give me the error message that no hard drive was found. im on a pre installed windows vista os.

Posted 1 year ago #

Top

Justin

Author

Posts: 3792

Actully it's AHCI you want to disable not SATA. SATA has two modes normal IDE and AHCI. You need to use one or the other to access the SATA drives. If you disable SATA then you have no access to the hard drives at all.
If you don't have that option in the BIOS then you need to burn a custom Windows XP with the ACHI SATA drivers included. See http://www.howtogeek.com/howto.....tallation/ for more on that.

Posted 1 year ago #

Top

cwalk

Member

Posts: 14

ok so i followed the tutorial up to the part about the drivers. what drivers does it want from me? the hard drive drivers?
my harddrive is a toshiba toshiba mk1246gsx

Posted 1 year ago #

Top

The Geek

Professional Geek

Posts: 1887

You need the drivers for the hard drive controller, essentially the motherboard. They often are labeled as SATA controller drivers on the manufacturer's site.

Posted 1 year ago #

Top

Justin

Author

Posts: 3792

The drivers for the SATA chipset in your machine. You maybe able to get them from the manufactor. The site would be support.dell.com in this case.
You select Windows XP and select the "Intel - Driver" entry.

Posted 1 year ago #

Top

cwalk

Member

Posts: 14

AWEsome!
thanks.

Posted 1 year ago #

Top

cwalk

Member

Posts: 14

so i got windows xp to work, but found it working really sluggishly on my 3 month old laptop. i think im gonna sticc with vista lol.

Posted 1 year ago #

Top

Justin

Author

Posts: 3792

You probably need to install things like the graphics card driver for the speed to be ok.

Posted 1 year ago #

Top

cwalk

Member

Posts: 14

ya i know, but i couldnt be arsed going through all that again haha.

Posted 1 year ago #

Top

cwalk

Member

Posts: 14

so i stopped being lazy and reinstalled windows xp. i looked through two tutorials on this site and it saved me a lot of time. now i just need to download ALL the drivers for my hardware xD

Welcome to the How-To Geek Forums

How-To Geek Forums » Windows Vista

i need help with this SATA disabling

Reply