Win XP Pro SP3 x86 "Setup did not find any hard disk drives..."

The BSOD (above) pretty much tells the story. After some miserable days trying to get our Intel 3rd Generation Dell Precision M4700 (circa 2013) laptop to give us video of any kind, we arrived at the point where we were trying to install Win XP Pro SP3 x86 from a couple of different installation discs. As we're working with the SP A55 SATA III 256GB SSD that, until recently, was the Win 11 system drive for this machine, I'm well aware of the fact that XP didn't include any provisions for AHCI. This being the case, I purposely switched the SATA Operation Mode in (the F12 activated) BIOS to ATA. Nevertheless, we keep seeing the BSOD (above) stating that "Setup cannot continue."

I haven't had to install a Windows OS in about 15 years, so, no doubt, certain things have been forgotten ... but I did remove and reinstall the SSD several times to ensure that it's seated properly. Before we attempted to install the Win XP Pro OS, I did a long run NTFS format to remove any traces of the previous OS, Win 11. I did not, however, partition the SSD. Could that possibly be the issue here? I'm thinking that there's a driver issue of some sort at play here, but my reading is telling me that ATA (IDE) mode should have allowed Win XP Pro to install, so I'm at a bit of a loss?

The machine is needed for a work project involving an old [but powerful] 32-bit utility that only runs via Win XP. If anyone has run into this problem, your help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you kindly.

 

https://superuser.com/questions/178909/unable-to-install-windows-xp-hard-disks-not-found

see above, and does the hard drive show up in the BIOS?

have not installed to an ssd so no personal experience with this issue.

 

Could be SSDs don't work well with WinXP. HDDs are so cheap now. 320GB "open box" only cost $12 USD shipped on eBay! (Make sure you get one WITHOUT the AF [Advanced Format] logo on the label. If you accidentally get an AF drive, you have to align it first with Windows 7!)

 

There are people that have successfully used SSDs in XP. I haven't tried though.

 

Windows XP loves SSD’s and M2’s. I use three 1TB Samsung EVO’s in Raid 5 striped to 2TB. I use Areca Sata Raid on my XP system. Windows XP treats SSD, M2’s, SCSI hard disks, and Sata hard disks all the same. It’s only you controller’s that will reflect the difference.

However, you may need to install your hard disk controller drivers with F6 I believe when you first build the system. Or on a laptop you can set it to IDE (PATA) in the Bios or AHCI.

Here is a good explanation of F6 procedure.

https://www.prime-expert.com/articl...i-raid-drivers-from-dvd-without-floppy-drive/

But there are hundreds of easy to follow instructions on the web.

 

This is more than likely the issue because sata wasn't around when xp first came out so there was a transition to sata and a lot of the legacy ide microcode is probably not there to allow it to boot.

 

And there's a collection of SATA drivers (and other devices) on website driverpack.io that work for Windows XP (and other OSs). With those packs, I have yet to see a device fail to install.
So you would use the F6 option during windows setup (there are USB floppies on eBay since your laptop doesn't have one), or just use a program like nLite to slipstream the drivers into your Windows CD, then burn the new copy.

The majority of 3rd-party XP releases have SATA drivers already slipstreamed into them, such as the Windows Integral Edition download links that have been floating around this forum.

BTW, I have seen BIOSes (like my Gigabyte) that let you select AHCI for some drives and ATA for others, simultaneously.