Windows Setup can't find my HDD.

So yeah. My friend begged me to wipe Vista off his notebook and give him lovely old XP. So I wiped off Vista. Now when beginning Setup for XP, it complains that it does not find hard drivess installed on the computer. It says to check that disk-related hardware settings are fine, and they are to the best of my knowledge. GParted/ Partition Magic toy with the drive just fine, as does the Ubuntu linux live CD.

So, uh. I'm pretty much stumped as of now. Any suggestions on where to start?

(I do have a Vista installation DVD on me, but it came with my brother's lappy so I don't have a serial for it. It doesn't seem to NOT see the HDD, though I don't know if it even thinks about it before you enter the serial or not.)

(Hah, I'm beginning to reconsider starting this whole venture since the XP drivers don't appear at first glance to exist for the hardware on his fairly new notebook. :DDD)

Yeah, it's a SATA driver issue, which XP doesn't usually have for newer stuff :p If you're lucky though, there might be a bios setting to make the disks appear as legacy or IDE disks to XP :p

You could always install Ubuntu :D

Woohoo! There was an option for IDE. Yayyyy. I'm gonna install it now. :D

And hah. I will. But he'll never bother learning how to use it. Ever. :P