How do I fix "Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer" error during Win XP Pro install?

I just bought a nettop. It came with WinXP Home. I first installed Win 7 on it. I wasn't that happy with the performance so I decided to go back to XP. I am using an external dvd drive and a Win XP Pro disc.

I boot from the dvd drive and during the install get this error:

Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer.

Make sure any hard disk drives are powered on and properly connected to your computer, and that any disk-related hardware configuration is correct. This may involve running a manufacturer-supplied diagnostic or setup program.

Setup cannot continue. To quit Setup, press F3.

This is the nettop in question:

5 Answers

You need to go into the BIOS and see if there is something similar to "SATA Operation Mode" and set it from AHCI to IDE. This usually works if you cannot find the right AHCI driver.

2

XP usually doesn't have the right SATA drivers on disk. You may need to find the SATA drivers and specify when you boot off the XP Disk that you need to use third party drivers.

You need to enter the BIOS and change the hard drive settings from AHCI to ATA. Save the changes, restart, boot to XP disk and VOILA!

This is most likely due to the way that the hard drive is loaded. I would look in the BIOS for any settings along the lines of "Hard Drive Mode".

Also, if you are using anything less than Service Pack 2, I believe that it has problems with SATA disks.

If you can not find this, it is likely that the manufacturers of your nettop will have a drivers disk that you can burn to CD and when windows setup loads, you press a key early on and it will load the hard disk driver.

3

i never had a problem with SATA drivers, XP automatically detected HDD drives. The only thing I did when this error appeared was to shutdown the pc, unplug cables from HDD (power and data) and blow air into the sockets or clean them with a brush (sometimes if the cables are old, you can just replace them) after that re-power your system and restart instalation and it should detect your HDD drives

this worked fron me many many times :)

3

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