ive done a silly thing help

hi all

great site great advice wonder if somebody could help me
i have been really silly i recently purchased an acer 5315 laptop and i removed windows vista and installed windows xp everything fine with windows xp nom problems what so ever.
now i want to reinstall windows vista home again and tried an upgrade which all seemed to go fine until the end where the computer was freezeing and would stay on black screen at windows start up. i tried so many times to install fresh copy but it wouldnt do it had same problems black screen.
this is the silly thing i have done in frustration i used my complete wipe disc to zero the hard drive back to factory settings all well and good process finished but i have now decided that because of the problems with vista i would reinstall windows xp pro but everytime it goes to the installation screen it says setup did not find any hard disk drives installed on your computer??
i know i have messed up something big time and would apreciate if somebody could help me resolve this problem obviously i have no drivers for the programes now if i do an install again but i have another computer if that would help me get anything i may need to sort this out.

any suggestions and adeas on this problem would be soo much apreciated

regards

craig

 

Hello Craig,

Don't know how you got XP installed the first time. You usually run into the probelm that XP doesn't recognize SATA hard drives and gives you the no hard drive error. This may be what you are experiencing. Normally the procedure is to install the SATA driver as you install, but withoiut a floppy drive, that can be a job. But, first try this:

On startup enter the BIOS (F2 on your machine).
In the BIOS go to:
MAIN
SATA Mode - and press the Enter key
If the Mode selected is AHCI Mode, select IDE Mode
EXIT
Exit saving changes.

 

hi thanks for the info much appreciated
when i first downgraded to windows xp i used the information in this site to do it and used a programe called nlite and an xp instalation disc heres the site i used http://soulpass.com/2007/11/10/inst...essional-sp2-on-acer-aspire-5315-2153-laptop/
but i have now stupidly wiped the hard drive back to factory settings something about the programe will zero the drive if that makes any scense.
as i said before the windows vista was preinstalled on the laptop so does this mean if it has gone back to factory settings i would be better off loading the vista installation instead or is that more complex???
i will try idea once i know if vista will not work rather be informed now rather than try it and be back at square one any suggestions much welcomed thank you again

 

I've "downgraded" Vista to XP on two Acer Aspire 5315's in the last few weeks. In one case I did it with the BIOS fix I suggested. In the other I used the nlite method you used and slipstreamed the Toshiba SATA driver into the boot CD (had a devil of a job getting Toshiba drivers). In both cases, before I removed Vista, I created a factory DVD and a drivers CD so I could re-install Vista if the XP install went bad. This Vista factory DVD is made from a super-hidden partition on the hard drive that contains the installation files for Vista.
Did you make such a DVD? Reason I ask is that neither laptop came with a factory reset DVD. I had to make my own. If you completely erased the hard drive, rather than just the C: partition, and don't have a factory restore DVD, I can't see how you will re-install Vista.
Try the BIOS switch I suggested. Doesn't cost anything and may work for you. A third-party boot-up partitioning utilty might help too,

 

hi claymore

i have tried your first suggestion and spot on mate have got windows xp re installed on the acer just gotta load the drivers for modem wireless etc
i have got a windows vista home premium installation disc could i now do the upgrade to vista without any trouble???

i have decided its best to stick with the original pre installed installation which was vista least if in future if i get any major problems i can get acer to help me sort it as i understand they dont support xp on the acer 5315 and also if i wanted to sell it it would be as it says on caseing windows vista.

any suggestions on vista upgrade would be much appreciated thanks again claymore

 

Can't imagine you would have any problems.