XP installer can't see partitions?

[pengus]

So I'm sick and tired of all the ThinkVantage crap that slows my boot times. I have my recovery media and I want all of the preloaded partitions gone. The only problem is that when I pop in my XP cd (OEM) and boot off of it, the installer can't detect any hard drives.

I want to delete the other partitions and do my own install. Any idea how to go about this? I've tried disabling the Predesktop and Security stuff in the BIOS to no avail.

thanks.

edit: I guess I could use some linux boot disk and see if that works. Will try and see what happens. Until then, suggestions?

[astro]

So I'm sick and tired of all the ThinkVantage crap that slows my boot times. I have my recovery media and I want all of the preloaded partitions gone. The only problem is that when I pop in my XP cd (OEM) and boot off of it, the installer can't detect any hard drives.

I want to delete the other partitions and do my own install. Any idea how to go about this? I've tried disabling the Predesktop and Security stuff in the BIOS to no avail.

thanks.

edit: I guess I could use some linux boot disk and see if that works. Will try and see what happens. Until then, suggestions?

This question has been asked many times before on this forum.

The reason is because the HD is SATA and OEM XP does not have the driver for the SATA controller. You can probably fix this by changing a setting in the BIOS to set the HD to "compatibility mode" and do the install.