Downgrading Vista to XP with a SATA drive

[JHarto]

I have a new Dell XPS430 That came with Vista installed. Vista won't work for
me for several reasons, chiefly I need Outlook Express. So I have a
XP-professional disk and I try to install it. It fails because the new
computer has a SATA drive. So I download the driver for the SATA Drive, but
the XP installation sequence stops aasking me to put the driver on a floppy
in drive A:. The new computer has no floppy, has no place to plug in a
floppy, and Dell Tech Support gave me err4roneous information. Can anybody
tell me how to get past this block???

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

I have a new Dell XPS430 That came with Vista installed. Vista won't work
for
me for several reasons, chiefly I need Outlook Express. So I have a
XP-professional disk and I try to install it. It fails because the new
computer has a SATA drive. So I download the driver for the SATA Drive,
but
the XP installation sequence stops aasking me to put the driver on a
floppy
in drive A:. The new computer has no floppy, has no place to plug in a
floppy, and Dell Tech Support gave me err4roneous information. Can
anybody
tell me how to get past this block???

Instructions for slipstreaming SATA drivers with an XP installation CD are
here..

http://maxeasyguide.blogspot.com/2008/04/preparations-for-winxp-installation-cd.html

Or get used to using Windows Mail or Windows Live Mail instead of OE..

 

[Andrew E.]

As intel puts it,running only a single SATA hd doesnt require the F6 driver
option,only if RAID is used...However,one must turn on SATA on the pc,by
default its disabled if IDE capability is present.Turn on in the BIOS,plus
set
disk boot priority.