THX bro !!! i got it !!

Load the SATA/RAID drivers from floppy

!! I don't mind looking for drivers for those people in need, but some manufacturers like Compaq is giving me a hard time. They have laptops with the same model number while having different specification from each other which makes it hard for me to find. So i insist that please try to list out your hardware specification as detail as you can for me to help you faster and easier. !!

For those who have access to USB floppy drives, here's the step how you want to get XP Setup to detect your SATA harddrive.

1. Attach USB floppy drive
   
   
2. Copy SATA/RAID drivers to a floppy
   
   
3. Reboot and boot from XP Setup disc
   
   
4. Look at the bottom of the screen and hit F6 when it says "Press F6 to load 3rd party SCSI/RAID Drivers"
   
   
5. A screen will show a list of drivers to load from the floppy which in most case only 1 item in the list
   
   
6. Select the driver there and XP Setup should be able to detect your hard drive
   
   
7. Resume XP installation as how you do normally
   
   

Here's a list of drivers to stop everyone from creating new threads to ask for drivers.

! I have updated some of the laptops with its chipset model !
! There are some laptops which their manufacturer haven't put up the corresponding drivers therefore i would link to a generic driver which should work the same. !
! I am just providing these details as per my knowledge to computers and would not hold responsible if any damage is done(which in this case should not be possible) to your computer. !

Acer
Aspire 4710 [i945GM] - ftp://ftp1.acer.com.sg/Support/files/Acer.../XPSP2/SATA.exe
Aspire 4720 [GM965] - http://downloadcenter.intel.com/license_ag...ystems〈=eng

Dell
Dell Inspiron 1420 - http://support.ap.dell.com/support/topics/...pup&file=205611

Please be awared that for certain cases, drivers would be the same if it is the same chipset. For example, if Aspire 4710 would be a 965GM chipset and 4720 is also using the same 865GM chipset, the same RAID/SATA drivers could be used to do the installation. If you're not sure, please ask first...

Post or PM me the laptop model here and i'll find for you and do the updating here.

Downloaded file should be *.exe where it should be a tool to prepare your floppy. It would format the floppy and copy all the needed files into your floppy disk.

Might be because when he updated the bios, the IDE mode was changed from SATA to AHCI