How to Fix “Setup did not find any hard disk drives” During Windows XP Install

by Peter Vatistas on February 25, 2008

If you read the comments from “How to Install OS X Leopard on a PC – iATKOS v1.0i Tutorial” you’ll see the issues I had when I tried to install Microsoft Windows XP after removing Ox86 Leopard from my Compaq laptop. When I booted the Windows XP Pro installation CD I was getting the error message “Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed on your computer”. After trying several times to partition and format (with no luck) I decided to try a very neat tool out called nLite.

nLite allowed me to configure my Microsoft Windows install CD by adding drivers and applications. I downloaded my laptop’s sata controller driver from Compaq’s website and added it and to the driver configuration portion of nLite as well as selecting “Bootable ISO”. After a couple minutes I had a new bootable Windows XP installation CD and no more missing hard disk error.

From what I found this error is quite normal for people that have sata hard drives, who have installed Microsoft Windows Vista and decided to downgrade back to Microsoft Windows XP.

Click Here Download nLite

Dell Drivers | HP Drivers | Compaq Drivers | Gateway Drivers | Sony Drivers | Asus | Toshiba

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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }

Tarken March 12, 2009 at 4:52 pm

I had the same problem going from Ubuntu (on a previously Vista machine) to Windows XP Home. Turned out needed to turn of the SATA auto-detect or whatever it was in the BIOS. Was set to ‘ENABLED’, and worked fine when disabled. Hope this helps someone.

Marc Friedlander February 4, 2010 at 11:09 am

I’m dealing with this issue right now, but I dont’ have Vista, only XP…I’m going to give it a shot to see if it works. My BOOT.INI file is messed up and I need to boot from the CD to rebuild it….

I really hope this works!

john May 7, 2010 at 10:02 am

thanks tarken..it’s works..i’ve been working on this stuff about a week..really need laptop to do my asignment..thanks again tarken..

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