Cannot install XP32 on partition in VISTA64- UNABLE TO FIND DRIVE

Hello people... Imma break it down for u....
I have
-Dell XPS 730x with 6 GIG DDR3 RAM, Intel i7 64 bit Processor, 500 GIG disk,
I am running
-Windows Vista Home Premium 64 which was preinstalled on the cpu
I want to
-Dual boot between Vista64 and Windows XP32
So far-
I have done everything to this machine from creating a virtual window in Vista64, to going into the command prompt from vista boot disk and running diskpart to clear hard drive.
I currently have
-Two partitions on one disk. Primary 200GIG and Healthy 265GIG
-Windows Vista Home Premium64 installed and running
The problems im having
-every time try to boot from CD and run the windows xp setup, it is UNABLE to find ANY HARD DRIVES!
I have researched that
- I must have the disk partitioned
- Windows XP must be installed first
- I have to play with the boot.ini
- If i install vista32 it will be more successful
The errors I have gotten
-STOP: 0x0000008E - i researched this and it said one option is to take out the excess RAM
I will be happy if
- By the end of this weekend I can successfully run XP or both OS's in dual boot.
I need to go through all this trouble because
- Digidesign has not written software for 64 bit proccessing yet. I need to make music.
Please help me.... Thank you....

It cannot find the hard drive because it is a SATA disk. You must install the SATA/RAID driver from usb thumb drive or floppy drive.
Your Vista OEM O/S disk has the sata/raid drivers slipstreamed, BUT your XP disk doesnt. That is your problem. Explore the Vista disk and locate the SATA driver and copy it to your floppy/usb thumb drive. When trying to run setup for XP and it states no hard disk found, look at bottom of screen and you will see "load Drivers", navigate to your sata driver, and install. This will make your drive visable for xp installation.

I forgot to mention that. I have the driver on a CD. when i run the installation, it asks me to press "S" to install third party driver, however it only recognizes a floppy drive. I dont have a floppy drive on this cpu. I am going to try to copy the driver onto an external right now... i hope it sees it as an option. THANX... Any further ideas are welcomed...

BIG JUS said:

I forgot to mention that. I have the driver on a CD. when i run the installation, it asks me to press "S" to install third party driver, however it only recognizes a floppy drive. I dont have a floppy drive on this cpu. I am going to try to copy the driver onto an external right now... i hope it sees it as an option. THANX... Any further ideas are welcomed...

Click to expand...

It will work also with a usb thumb drive, but you have to remove the U3 smart drive program- It will not be able to tell the difference between the thumbdrive and a usb floppy drive. Just make sure your boot in BIOS is set for USB floppy.

set USB-FDD as first boot device

No such luck.... When pressing F6 to install third party driver, after selecting"S", it states "no floppy drive found" and then my only option is to quit setup... question... can I install windows XP on the external? it has tons of room, however i think it has low rpms...

oh yes, and i do not have a thumb drive, it is an "elements" external usb hard drive. there is no U# to uninstall... i will try to go to the BIOS and configure it to load from USB. But wont i have to then put the XP setup on the external? cuz when i reboot the first option will be the driver on the usb external. so i need thw XP setup on it too...no?



10:21pm et..... UNSUCCESSFUL ALL ATTEMPTS

How do I find the boot.ini, or bcdedit.exe in vista 64? i searched the whole cpu, and i enabled hidden files to be seen... anyone???

Start>type cmd>right click command prompt and run as admin> type bcdedit /enum all
\Windows\system32\winload.exe

thanx... the external is FAT32.... i dont think this will work.... i appreciate the help though... and when i selected boot from usb, it went to the CD anyways....

FOUND IT! first thing that went right all weekend... i did a search before in explorer and got nada... feel like a dumbass... now the question is, does anyone know how to tweak it properly to run the XP setup to be able to find a hard drive??? i have two primary partitions.... both 200gig,....

BIG JUS said:

thanx... the external is FAT32.... i dont think this will work.... i appreciate the help though... and when i selected boot from usb, it went to the CD anyways....

Click to expand...

the external format is fat32- what type of drive is it?

BIG JUS said:

FOUND IT! first thing that went right all weekend... i did a search before in explorer and got nada... feel like a dumbass... now the question is, does anyone know how to tweak it properly to run the XP setup to be able to find a hard drive??? i have two primary partitions.... both 200gig,....

Click to expand...

Editing the boot menu options on your sata drive (active Vista partition) will not allow you to boot XP from an external drive.
If you want to run xp either dual boot, or run it on virtual pc.

it shows as a usb-wd.... its an elements 300gig external usb...

another question....(u thought id stop)... i am in the command prompt, and im in the c:\windows\system32\bcdedit.exe.... and when i try to get in it says it could not be opened, and the access is denied.... i try to open it in vista, and nothing happens.... any thoughts???

To edit you need to mark and paste. type bcdedit /? for command and option info

To setup xp on bootable external:
format your device like Floppy, or Pen drive in a FAT File system, and then copy “ntldr” and “ntdetect.com” files from the i386 folder of XP disk. Then you need to copy your Boot.ini file to the drive to make it bootable.

Warning- If you do this wrong you will corrupt your Vista installation

i typed it in... access is still denied.... i tried it mad ways.... says its not recognized otherwise

i dont think the external can run an OS... it was only $200... its description is
WD 3200AAJ External USB Device
file system: FAT32

???

BIG JUS said:

i typed it in... access is still denied.... i tried it mad ways.... says its not recognized otherwise

i dont think the external can run an OS... it was only $200... its description is
WD 3200AAJ External USB Device
file system: FAT32

???

Click to expand...

using command prompt, and running as administrator?

the max serial transfer rate of the external is 480md/s MAX... is that enough to run XP? i dont think so... The program i am looking to install(Pro Tools 8) uses alot of resources... i dont think it would be safe to go that route...

i just installed vista, i am the only user, so i guess it is logged in as admin... is there a way to tell? is there a way to tell in DOS?

Then your options are to load sata driver from either a usb floppy or usb thumb drive and dual boot
or
Run virtual pc 2007 in Vista and install XP on the virtual machine (link is above in previous post to download Virtual pc)

i already ran xp on this machine via vmware server.... the program (protools 8) isnt even able to install, and the functionability is limited with that program... u can go to

Digidesign | Support | Compatibility & Upgrade Information

that is the specs on the program...