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I was using my old laptop with SSD as a primary drive. After buying the SSD I formatted the HDD for storing just personal data, so I wiped it out (OS, MBR etc. - everything).
Now I moved the SSD to my new laptop (as primary disk again) and can't install Windows XP to the old one.
Firstly I got a BOOTMBR is missing
error which seems logical because I formated the whole HDD and there is not any MBR now. I red about this error and the suggestions are to use Repair
instead of a new installation. But I don't have any old OS on the HDD, so this is not working for me. Anyway, after inserting the installation disk (Windows XP) the files are loaded etc, I'm entering the setup but after choosing fresh install (tried with Repair, too) I am getting this error:
Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer
The disk is detected without a problem in BIOS, so it is not a hardware connection problem.
What to do now?
Note to exclude some suggestions:
- The laptop is not supporting booting from USB;
- I have not any external floppy drive if I will need HDD drivers or something similar;
- I have not any optical drive. The new laptop hasn't an optical drive (ultra bay is used for the SSD where is the OS) and it's the only computer which I can use for now.
I also want the data from the second partition of this HDD - i.e. my old D: partition
before buying the SSD. On the old C: partition
I have just 1 or 2 movies after formatting it so I do not need them. So, I prefer a solution without loosing the data (not very critical: movies, music, (e)books, photos) if it's possible. Or maybe I should copy the data somehow (maybe some Linux LiveCD and crossover cable, SATA to USB hard drive box etc.) before trying to install XP?
Any ideas?
What's the laptop model? How did you wipe the HDD? – gronostaj – 2013-08-16T14:17:47.523
The laptop is Toshiba Satellite A300-15E. I just formatted the old C: partition to remove the old OS and using it for data storage. – enenen – 2013-08-16T14:31:38.747
So you haven't wiped everything, but just one partition, and very likely wasn't actually wiped and files were (are?) recoverable. Specifically, you haven't wiped MBR, as it's not a part of any partition. That's just FYI, @daxlerod's has a solution for you in his answer below. – gronostaj – 2013-08-16T18:22:37.033
Yes, I was able to install Windows 7 without any problems as @daxlerod suggested. Also as you say, my files in the other partition are still there, so everything is good now. And just to understand: if MBR is not a part of the primary partition then why I got these errors when trying to install Windows XP? – enenen – 2013-08-16T19:09:22.447
1Because XP's installer doesn't support your RAID or AHCI controller, so it couldn't detect the hard drive. And you got the
BOOTMGR is missing
message (MGR for Manager, not MBR) message because XP's boot manager was still in MBR and tried to open BOOTMGR file from the first partition that was already formatted. – gronostaj – 2013-08-16T22:22:20.540