How to Install Windows on PCs with SATA HDD but no floppy?

Nowadays notebooks are equipped with a SATA interface hard drive that sometimes is not all recognized by Windows XP installer! And to add to your agony, the machine came sans floppy drive! Your XP installer doesn’t recognise the SATA HDD and the machine doesn’t have a floppy drive.

Well you can always use a USB Floppy Disk Drive. But what if you don’t have one?

Well, here are steps to try and overcome the problem.

1. Find a PC that has a floppy disk drive ( Need this to install the SATA HDD driver to floppy).

2. Download the appropriate SATA driver for your HDD.

3. Write image to floppy. Keep the floppy in the drive.

4. Download and install nLite.

5. Follow the steps in these images.

- Place your XP CD and let nLite copy it to a folder of your choice, e.g d:\i386

Click on Drivers and Bootable ISO and press Next.

Make sure your diskette containing the SATA HDD driver is in the drive. Click Insert and browser for the SATA driver in your floppy disk.

Click Yes to create the ISO image which you can burn later. You can use ImgBurn or Nero.

Now you’ll be able to install/reinstall XP on the PC ( desktop/notebook ).

Eko Wahyudiharto have shared his experience but for Acer TravelMate 6291 Notebook. You can see the steps he has taken here He has also placed a link for Acer 6291 SATA driver on his blog.

Good luck trying.

---

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Free Disk Defrag