Hard Drive issue after OSX removal?

[bradm]

I have a question that hopefully someone can answer.

 

I have a Sony Vaio VGN-NR260E Notebook. The problem I am having is this:

 

Reformatted HDD and installed Snow Leopard 10.6.3 on it. Worked fine except for the ethernet and wireless. I then reformatted the partition to fat32 with disk utility and went to boot back with my Windows XP CD and it gets through the first stage, choose install new XP and says it cannot find any hard drives. I took the SATA drive out and hooked it to USB to PC and reformatted (FAT, NTFS, etc). Wiped out partition, etc. Put it back in notebook and same thing happens.

 

Now when I put boot disc back in and boot up Snow Leopard 10.6.3 retail disc I can see hard drive in the disc utility and can partition, format, etc. Put it back in notebook to install XP and same issue. Weird right?

 

Now this. I took another notebook SATA hard drive I know that works and same thing. I took the SATA hard drive out of my wife's netbook and get the SAME error.

 

Bottom line is no matter what hard drive I put in I get the same issue. But when I boot with OSX boot disc and go into Snow Leopard and try to install it I can go into disc utility and see the hard drive no problem.

 

When I even attempt to boot from XP it boots straight from CD as if no hard drive is there. XP usually asks to push any button to boot from CD. I don't even get that option. Acts as if hard drive is not present. Put in OSX boot disc and it boots from disc and sees disc and New Volume (hard drive name) and then I can put OSX install disc in and hit F5 to pull it up.

 

Did this mess my bios up or something? Or is there a way to fix it?

 

Thanks for any help that anyone and someone can give me on this. I just want to be able to use the hard drive to reinstall my Windows XP again.

[dothacker]

did you manage to check your SATA settings in your BIOS? mess around with it and all that... if it's on AHCI is on, turn it off. If the SATA settings are in Legacy, change it back to compatible, or something.

[bradm]

did you manage to check your SATA settings in your BIOS? mess around with it and all that... if it's on AHCI is on, turn it off. If the SATA settings are in Legacy, change it back to compatible, or something.

 

I managed to get it fixed. For some reason my Windows XP disc was messed up. I managed to get it done and had to create another image and inject my SATA drivers into it. This got it up and running. Surprised it even made it as far as it did. Managed to get it up and running now.

 

Might have to scratch that also. I am wanting to try iAtkos S3 10.6.3. I got it running on this desktop and am typing this in it right now. This version managed to get my ethernet working. The retail version would not.

 

Now I need to see if this iAtkos will work on my laptop. Hopefully. But would hate to have to mess with a boot CD all the time. My laptop with the SATA hard drive does not have AHCI option.

 

FYI my board for my desktop I got working.

 

MSI G31TM-P21

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.33 ghz E6550

4GB PC6400

GeForce 210 512mb PCI-E

Seagate SATA II 500 GB HDD (Windows XP SP2)

Western Digital SATA II 80 GB HDD (Snow Leopard iAtkos S3 v10.6.3)

Realtek High Def Audio

Realtek R8100E Ethernet adapter PCI-E

Kingston Ethernet Adapter (forgot model since it is in here and I have no idea how to find out its information.)