Thinkpads Forum

I'm having an issue re-installing XP from scratch on my brother in laws T60. Since it was our standard model where I work I recommended it for him for college (and also since I support it at work, I'd know about it when he inevitably called.)

At any rate, inevitability happened and by the end of one year of college he'd hosed up the OS. So he brought the laptop to me and I recommended a from scratch OS reload and he left the laptop with me.

So I got my copy of XP, downloaded the SATA drivers and got to work.

Now here is my issue, I load the SATA drivers (by specifying with F6) and load them. When it comes time to begin the first steps of loading windows, I get a message that windows was unable to detect any hard disk drives and to press F3 to reboot.

Can someone verify the correct SATA drivers to use? Has anyone else had this issue?

Thanks in advance

In the BIOS change the HDD settings from SATA to Compatibility mode.

Second option is to integrate the SATA driver directly in Windows XP using nLite.

http://www.kylefarnung.com/index.php/20 ... tom_oem_wi

Download wireless or ethernet drivers, sata drivers, .net 2.0, system update onto a memory stick or cd.

set bios to compatibility mode

install XP

run the sata driver so it expands to the hard drive. in the "prepare" folder run the install.cmd file.

reboot laptop and change bios setting back to ahci.

install either wireless or Ethernet so you can get online.

install .net 2.0 and system update.

run system update to get the rest of the thinkpad drivers / software.

unfortunately, not all software may be installed with system update. I had to manually grab the video drivers from the driver matrix.

dexterryu wrote:I'm having an issue re-installing XP from scratch on my brother in laws T60. Since it was our standard model where I work I recommended it for him for college (and also since I support it at work, I'd know about it when he inevitably called.)

At any rate, inevitability happened and by the end of one year of college he'd hosed up the OS. So he brought the laptop to me and I recommended a from scratch OS reload and he left the laptop with me.

So I got my copy of XP, downloaded the SATA drivers and got to work.

Now here is my issue, I load the SATA drivers (by specifying with F6) and load them. When it comes time to begin the first steps of loading windows, I get a message that windows was unable to detect any hard disk drives and to press F3 to reboot.

Can someone verify the correct SATA drivers to use? Has anyone else had this issue?

Thanks in advance

It's not clear if you ran the file you downloaded (to extract it first) and then copied the expanded file to a floppy, in order to load then by the F6 method.

If you did then chances are if you go to the BIOS you are in compatibility mode now, and you need to switch it to SATA mode.

My personal opinion is do not load the SATA drivers, because the current drivers do not support compatibility mode and do not offer a speed improvement. And if you ever use an external ATA device the SATA drivers may create problems. So simply skip that step, and then hide that option in future downloads.

Otherwise go into the Bios and configuration, and set the hard drive to the non compatibility mode (ahci), and then try rebooting. He may have simply updated the drivers, and not switched out of compatibility mode, making the system unbootable.

Hope that helps some.

This page may also help,
Installation instructions for Windows XP - ThinkPad T60, T60p