Tecra Laptops

[#1]

Hi guys, this is my first post! I was recently given a used Tecra A8-ez8512 that had vista business installed. As a keen user of XP i decided to format the WHOLE hard drive then clean install xp pro sp2.

I formatted the whole drive using GDisk utility so there were no partions left. I then created 2 partions of size 30GB and 45GB (HD is 80GB). Once complete, I put my XP cd in the drive and restarted the laptop ready to select boot from cd. But now it just freezes on the Toshiba splash screen and there isn't even a little cursor unnderneath the icons. I try pressing different buttons on the keyboard but still nothing happens.

If I press CTRL+ALT+DEL, the laptop restarts, skips the splash screen, reads the xp cd for a few seconds, then gives the message "Invaild System Disk, insert ..... try again...".

I haven't tried with the Toshiba recovery CD as I don't have it yet. Would it still work considering there is nothing on the HD?

Please can someone give me some advice? Thanks in advance

[#2]

Tecra A8-EZ8512 

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I haven't tried with the Toshiba recovery CD as I don't have it yet. Would it still work considering there is nothing on the HD?

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A Toshiba recovery disc will work just fine. The restore package is created to see the hard drive.

Since this machine comes with Vista Business, you should be able to obtain the XP recovery media.

The problem is that when Windows XP was developed, there were no SATA drives. And the installation package was never updated to include a SATA-controller driver. So you would need to add one. Google on that.