Re: trying to put XP on a new Gateway laptop

On Tue, 27 Jan 2009 20:31:30 -0500, "Dave" <noway1@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


"John B. Smith" <crasso@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:532vn49mqo6h04ali621kcrqlqvmuvjfmm@xxxxxxxxxx
I finally scratched my itch to buy a laptop computer. It came with
Vista 64 bit. Some of my prized software won't run on it.

Uh-oh. Duck and run for cover. You will get flamed and WORSE in this ng
for daring to post the truth that not all software runs on vista 64.

I tried
booting an XP install CD ( from my desktop I'm typing on now. I'd buy
another copy if it worked). Stops when finished loading various
drivers tries to boot something on the hard drive: "Problem has been
detected and Windows shut down... blah blah" "Run chkdsk/f to check
for hard drive corruption".

Never see the F6 option offerred.

I figured the new-style NTFS on the hard drive couldn't be read by the
XP boot CD. I put another, new notebook hard drive in a USB disk
enclosure, attached enclosure to my desktop PC, and made a boot
partition and formatted it in XP NTFS. Put this hard drive into
laptop, got same error message when tried to run XP CD install.

If I just try to boot on the empty new hard drive, says: "Pre-boot
eXecution Environment (PXE) V2.1, copyright Intel Corp, Failure, check
cable, operating sysem not found"

Put original hard drive from the laptop into enclosure. Hooked to my
desktop. Looked at enclosure drive with desktop Disk Management.
There are 3 partitions:
PQSERVICE , 10 gig, 'unknown' partition NTFS no drive letter
(D:) OS 227.88gig NTFS
(E:) DATA 227.88gig NTFS

I figure the BIOS must boot SOMETHING off PQSERVICE before booting
into the OS (Vista). However, my XP install CD doesn't know how to
read this strange little 10G partition. But that's where the BIOS
sends it to. And, since it's a big name-brand Gateway, there's very
few options available in BIOS to play with. Can anyone tell me for
sure what is happening here and offer a workaround to get XP installed
onto the laptop? I SHOULD have option to return laptop to store for
refund, if they don't jerk me around.


OK, is this hard drive SATA? Very likely, if it's a brand new laptop
running vista preinstalled. My guess:
1) 10 gig is a recovery partition. You should be able to access the data
with some kind of program that was installed on the original hard drive.
But it won't matter if you intend to wipe out everything and install xp
2) To access the SATA hard drive with the XP install CD, you will need SATA
drivers on floppy disk. If you have no floppy drive, you can use a USB
thumb drive, format it as a floppy drive, and put the SATA drivers there.
Good luck, -Dave

Thanks for the instant replies guys. I told a long story, maybe I
didn't make it clear that, though I first tried to put XP on the
original laptop drive, I procured a 2nd laptop drive (yep, both are
SATA) to experiment with. I figured that my initial XP problem was
that it was trying to read a foreign version of NTFS, and if I
formatted the new one with my desktop (in an enclosure) I could beat
that problem - no help though.

Gateway literature that came with the machine was only 2 sheets of
paper. You can restore to default from WITHIN Vista, OR use Alt+F10 at
boot.. I do suspect that a proper manual MIGHT exist online in psf
form, I guess I'd better check.

Connor:
I sure wouldn't know how to create some version of XP that's
accessible from Vista, maybe it tells how in that manual. Sounds very
rube-goldbergish though.

For the BIOS suggestions, thanks, but you guys apparently have never
seen a butchered-up BIOS version that big retailers like Dell, Gateway
and the like put in their machines. That's mainly why I quit Dell (for
desktops, I now build my own). They chop off options so they don't
have to deal with complexity during tech assist calls) I would have
bought Dell for a laptop though if one was available in my price
range. I don't know much about notebooks, obviously. The 10gig mystery
partition might well contain backkup/restore info, BUT the BIOS tries
to reference it when I put the NEW empty drive in and try to boot on
it. And it uses Intel's "Pre-boot eXecution Environment (PXE) V2.1,
copyright Intel Corp, whtever and WHEREEVER that might be, to do so. I
suspect its on a PROM, to start things off.

Maybe I missed the F6 blurb on the bottom of the screen. I DO have
SATA drivers available on my Abit CD, though I've never used them, as
they're not needed unless you do disk arrays, which I don't. HOWEVER,
I did use that XP CD to install XP on my Abit motherboard and never
bothered with SATA drivers for its SATA drives.
.