I finally figured out how to get in the BIOS on this new laptop and changed the SATA setting from AHCI to COMPATIBILITY, then it accepted the drivers. Although it said it was installing a SCSI drive.
I just purchased a Toshiba TECRA A9 with Vista Ultimate for one of my bosses'thinking I could use virtual PC for XP Pro. That won't allow him to do everything he needs to so I am trying to downgrade to XP Professional(I have a retail install CD). I've tried wiping out the disk with dBan (but there is still a protected area) and also just using the BCD tools to change an empty partition to XP.
Either way, when I get XP to recognize that there is a disk it only sees 980 mb.
Maybe I don't have the right driver for the SATA drive? I downloaded the Intel SATA drivers for my controller. The file only shows 2 mobile disk choices when I do the F6 option on install, but there were desktop choices.
Would purchasing a new drive help? The price is right. Please help, otherwise I owe my company big $$ and Toshiba could care less even though I've purchased their support program.
this is my configuration:
PTS52UTC97S2
Bluetooth BT V2.0 +EDR
CPU CORE2 DUO T7500 2.2 800
Graphics Controller INTEL GM965
HDD 2.5 SATA 120G 5400
LCD 15.4 WS+
Memory DDR2 667 1GB+DDR2 667 1GB
MiniPCI INTEL 802.11(A/G/N) 11CH-KEDRON
MS Works
ODD 12.7MM 8X DVD-SUPERMULTI +-R DL
Pointing Device DUALPOINT
Office Software OFFICE SUITE READY 2007
Operating System WIN VISTA 32BIT ULTIMATE
Warranty 3YR-STD
Windows Sticker VISTA PREMIUM LOGO
Connector SERIAL/NO 1394
LAN 1GBPS LAN
sorry for the long post but I'm in trouble here.

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