Hard Drive Replacement

I had a problem after booting computer. I kept getting a message "AHCI BIOS not installed" and would stop there. Suspected a hard drive problem. Took into a tech and they confirmed a hard drive failure. I purchase a new WD 350GB SATA hard drive to replace the bad one. I removed the old one and installed the new HD. Turned on computer and got the same message. I tried to boot through Windows XP OS disk but kept getting an error message "The problem seems to be caused by the following file: setupdd.sys" When the OS installation asks whether to partition no drives show up to do so.

Not sure what I am missing??

Olyneum

Hello,

Check this article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/330181it mostly happens if there is an incompatibility with hardware. I assume your using XP SP 2 or above. If the HDDs are larger than 132 GB and Your version of XP is without SP1, then install SP1 before continuing the partitioning/formating beyond the one onto which XP is installed. Older BIOS might need SATA drivers. Check this article http://cruftbox.com/blog/archives/000867.html

Hope this helps !

Thanks for the advice. The microsoft article is no longer there. I will look at the Cruftbox article and give it a try.

Olyneum

Hi, go to BIOS and find your Drives configuration. You should see somewhere HDD - AHCI, just click Enter on that and shange it to SATA. Save your changes with F10 and restart your computer ;)