Pre-Vista Installation on SATA
2 May
Okay, as promised I will be documenting the process of installing pre-Vista OS in a SATA drive. However, I will be documenting on a specific unit: Acer Aspire M1640.
PRE-REQUISITES:
- nLite
- Best for NF4-6 WHQL driverpack for XP (32bit) v1.8 (mirror)
- Windows XP/2K3 disc
- DVD Burner
STEPS:
- Copy all contents of the Microsoft Windows XP/2K3 in a local drive (i.e. C:\tmp\os).
- Extract the contents of the driver (Pre-req#2) in a local drive (i.e. C:\tmp\drv).
- Run nLite and follow the images below:
- Burn the .iso image into a blank disc.
- Insert the finished disc into the Aspire drive and install the operating system. Voila!
Another source: http://paparadit.blogspot.com/2007/06/installing-sata-hard-drive-with-windows.html
I tried to use your method for installing XP with the customized install disc on the exact same machine that you did it with (ACER M1640 desktop), and it will not start windows from the install CD/DVD.
It seems to load all the drivers. I see many ATA/RAID/SATA drivers being loaded, but as soon as it says it’s starting windows it comes back with an error and asks me to run some CHDSK/F or something. The drive checks out fine in vista.
I followed your directions exactly (three times).
Did you have to reformat the hard drive before you ran the installer perhaps?
Actually I had to reformat the drive before I found this solution… so to answer your question, I did reformat. If you’re not going to use Vista at all, I strongly suggest reformatting and remove all partition that Acer created for you.
Thanks for the helpful guide. I have successfully created the disk. How exactly did you go about reformatting the drive?
Thanks Jack
my neighborhood friend FDISK
Where did you find the textmode driver for the m1640? I have the download from Acer however it did not include the txtsetup.oem file. Thanks.
Nevermind…forgot to look at prerequisites. Thanks a ton! nLite is a cool program and adding the txtsetup.oem file allows XP disk to load correctly. Awesome.
aovaron. at the risk of sounding like an utter newb, how exactly did you fdisk? I have tried dban, UltimateBootCD & the USB boot drive at http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=29726
No matter what I do I can not boot to any of these in the CD or usb. I was able to boot to gparted, but frankly I wasn’t sure what to do once I was in it. And gparted appeared to lock uop at one point so I shyed away from it. I can not boot to any XP CD either. I am starting to wonder if I just have a bad PC.
Finally, were you able to find the XP drivers, ie HD Audio & Nvidia network card?
Thanks for your advice.
Jack
What I did was pulled out an old floppy drive from an old PC lying around and had to dig in for an old floppy then loaded FDISK in it.
Smart girl! I may do the same. Did you find all the drivers?
Thanks Jack
My Gravatar seems to be very deceptive. I’m a guy :) hehe
See the PRE-REQUISITES for the driver. I don;t know if we have the same model, but if we do, then you can use the Textmode driver.
This is the best post I have found to solve my problem. I have recently bought an acer aspire m1640 and I was desperate because I could not install XP. Thanks a lot, you are the best.
I follow all the steps succesfully, and my XP disc runs correctly, but after the installation, in the first reboot, while XP load screen appears, it get freezed ….
I have Acer Aspire M1640…
Did you re-install? It may fix the problem.
No, it didn’t…but I read somewhere XP SP2 could do erros so I tried with XP SP1 and everything was OK, take care with the Geforce 7050 XP Driver
This worked like a charm! I had no issues and did not have to pre-format the sata drive.
Appeared to install fine, but upon restart when Windows starts up, it BSOD’s with a 7B. Does it not install the drivers during setup?
It should install the drivers during setup.
ACER ASPIRE M1640
After installing Windows XP – The 9-1 Media card reader doesnt work, and I cant seem to find the dirvers for it. Can you help??
Iv installed XP now – but only the 9-1 Media Card reader doesnt work – any ideas where I can get the drivers for it – as I cant find any
have xp installed on my new Acer Aspire M1640 (Desktop)
everything is working, but for some reason when i put a blank cd into the burner, it doesnt give me options to do any burning
i also have NTI CD & DVD Maker Platinum (latest version) and when attempting to burn a cd with this program it gives me a write error all the the time .. i know my cd-r’s and dvd-rs are not a problem as they work in my other burner on my second machine
Could it be the ROM for this computer that has a problem? If you had Vista before, were you able to burn CD/DVD?
yes i am able to burn when i was using vista .. just cant for some reason burn in xp at all ..
Could you update the CD ROM’s XP driver? Try that first because sometimes it’s caused by the driver.
Yea, that works….. BUT after installation XP does not start, that shit crashes on mup.sys driver. i already hate this machine, and ACER as well. now i am trying to fix this problem…
BTW linux starts normally.
I could not fix the problem with mup.sys (neither extracting it from the console, nor disabling it on boot helped… also i had downloaded a new firmware for bios… i thought that it will let me switch from RAID to ACHI), and i found an old IDE drive, and installed XP on it.
Works perfectly, without problems, but i recommend to throw out M1640 and other “desktop systems”. Better buy all the stuff by yourself, and there will be no problems at all.
So better install linux & have no problems, or use vista *ROFL*. After that, can you say than MS is a good OS?
hi
have manage to get winxp pro insalled using nlite & intergrated drivers thanks
my pc is the same as the one in demo acer aspire m1640 could you tell me were you got the drivers as im having trouble finding the i have used the ones of acer site but they are for vista ? allthough some worked i have yellow explanation mark on the ethrenet & can only get on the internet through my dlink wireless any help would good
thanks cath
See the mirrored link.
Hi if you can`t get XP running on your Acer M1640 Bring it in to us and we will do the install for you. Check out the website http://www.pcwizkid.co.uk
Hey
Thanks for the guide, it got me further than any others, but for some reason this pc isnt giving up without a fight. I’m using the same Acer M1640 as in the guide so im not sure why im having so many problems
I swapped out the 350gb hard drive that came with the model beacuse it was riddled with bad sectors, threw in a 500gb sata seagate drive, installed a custom xp version integrated with the sata raid drivers (tried the sata ide drivers as well.) For some reason no matter what I attempt, after the installation is complete and it reboots to finish the process it loads to the ‘windows did not shut down right’ screen giving me the options to load normally or within safe mode either selection sends it back into rebooting.
The bios seems to pick up the hard drive without problem, Im not sure how to set the RAID on the hard drive, nor if i need to since im only using one drive at the moment.
Any advice? (sorry to bring up an old thread :P)
Hi followed the guide and the cd seemed to work ok (didn’t need to press f6 to load the drivers from floppy so I assume the cd has them now) however once it starts ‘creating list of files to copy’ I get
Insert disk labeled
NVIDIA RAID DRIVER (SCSI)
into drive a
Just like before
I would be grateful for any advice as the drivers loaded well enough to remove all the partitions but now I can’t get anything back on the damn hard drive.
Hey fonse. just wanted to say thanks for the blog post. it got me most of the way. finally sorted out my drivers and thought i’d post for others.
ok.. with the package fonse linked to above, i got everything running except the High Definition Audio, and the display driver. I tried manually running the audio installer and “updating driver” from within Comp Management and pointing it at the audio/video drivers.. just wouldnt recognize it.
After stuffing around for a while, i worked out the chipset is an nvidia mcp73, and downloaded the chipset drivers from the nvidia website here
http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_winxp_15.24.html
this sorted out the video driver,.. but still left the audio to sort out.
found out that the audio device is a Realtek RTL8019. went looking for the drivers on the Realtek site and by chance downloaded the generic Realtek High Definition Audio device driver that you can find here (listed as High Definition Audio Codecs):
http://122.146.118.42/downloads/
(or go to the Realtek site and hit Downloads and you’ll see it listed there)
i done really understand the step…
This does not work for me. I cannot even boot from the disk, it just ignores the fact that I have told it to boot from the disk and just carries on loading Windows 7.
Could someone please help me, I have become very annoyed with this system as it just presents me with problem after problem…
Thanks
Jack
it worked for me, thank you so much, you are rock !!!
Thank you very much , was very helpfull
I need help for the Acer Aspire 5516 Laptop. I can’t find the RAID/SATA/IDE drivers for WinXP 64bit and neither a driver for my AMD M690V Chipset. Could you shed some light to guide somewhere (website, etc..) ?
Great article – works like a charm without issue.
Many thanks for taking the time to share.
I had to reformat the drive before I found this solution… so to answer your question, I did reformat. If you’re not going to use Vista at all, I strongly suggest reformatting and remove all partition that Acer created for you.
After quite some time trying to figure my problem, I found the answer right here. Thank you so much for this solution and the way you have given simple step by step directions. Top stuff.
Hi Fonse.
I really appreciate your efforts with this article and I must say I have tried to make it work in all shapes and forms but with no luck, I have a brand new m1640 that has been sitting in the box since 2008, 300gb drive, 3GB memory, nForce and all that but like hell can I now, after formatting and eliminating all partitions, get it to install XP, 2003, Vista or 7, it’s all gone pear shaped mate, any ideas?
Cheers
I’ve tried looking for a driver for my new Seagate barracuda 7200.12 SATA HDD 500gb on their website but i think seagate don’t have any driver for this. Actually i would like to install XP pro on this HD. Can you suggest one? Because everytime i tried installing XP Pro i just received a blue screen error message sort of a booth control error type.
Thanks.