Hi,

I ended up buying a Sony VAIO FZ140E which came with Vista. I was not expecting to face any problems and I inserted my genuine XP CD in the DVD drive and started the system.... Everything appeared to be working as it does when you are installing XP on a new machine UNTIL i got a windows which basically said that no internal drives can be found... and press F3 to exit.

Am I now stuck with Vista? I don't want it, hate it, and want XP on my Laptop. Can someone PLEASE help.

Thanks.

No worries. DON'T UNINSTALL XP. All you have to do is go into your BIOS and change your SATA settings. By default, it's probably set up to AHCI. Change it to IDE or ATA.

Viola! XP boots!

Hope that helps!

Many thanks krazynutz. I'll try that. BTW,if it works will I be able to install the drivers which I have downloaded from Sony's site) and be able to use everything without any problem?

that depends on whether or not Sony is providing all drivers for the hardware under Windows XP. If they have XP drivers for all the parts of your laptop, then you're golden. Vista drivers will definitely NOT work for XP.

Good luck!

I just bought a Sony VAIO VGN-NR310E with Intel T2370 Dual-core processor and Windows Vista preinstalled on it. I shrank the original partition and installed a new partition and tried to install Windows Xp as dual boot(it wasn't easy because SATA hard drive changes cannot be made in the BIOS, so had to slipstream some SATA AHCI drivers using nlite before the hard disks could be recognized. THe installation of XP was uneventful and I selected the usual regional setting and username etc. When the computer restarting it showed the usual window of XP but a few seconds after that went completely blank and restarted. So, after an apparent normal installation, XP just does not start!! Any suggestions ??!!

Will you give me the url of sata driver download page, because i have the same problem, thanks

m_shezy, what is your laptop? We can then point you in the right direction.

HateVista: Try to do a repar (Repair Windows)

It's most likely a driver issue, probably the SATA

hi,i too cannot able to install win XP professional on my sony vaio VGN-AR61E laptop having windows vista home premium.whn i try to install disk not found error comes and ask to press F3 to exit.there is no option in bios to change the drive settings to make it SATA.plz help me out.i dont want vista on my system