Thanks to Paul, I now have win xp loaded and slowly finding the rest of the
required drivers. Good work! Charles

"Paul" wrote:

Charles wrote:
Hello, I am trying to convert a recently purchased Sony Vaio laptop
VGN-FZ140E from Vista to XP. Upon installation, xp will not recognize my
Toshiba MK2035GSS sata hard drive. Sony will not help and Toshiba techs are
unreachable. I need to have a controller or driver that will make xp
installation possible. I have already done a considerable amount of Internet
research, but since I do not know how controllers work and who is supposed to
manufacture the darn thing, I feel like I am feeling my way in the dark. Can
you help provide a clue as to where I might look? Thanks for your time,
Charles

An advert for the thing, mentions "GMA X3100" graphics. That is a graphics
built into an Intel chipset. For an Intel chipset, there should be drivers
available.

You could use a utility, to check the chipset type. (As long as Vista doesn't
complain - after all, this thing probes hardware.)

http://www.cpuid.com/download/cpu-z-140.zip

This is chipset drivers for GM965, if that is what you've got.

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Prod...=2800&lang=eng

For SATA on an Intel chipset, there are several options. A SATA port can
be controlled via RAID BIOS, it can be in AHCI mode, or vanilla SATA mode.
The last of those should be supported by a driver in the OS itself. WinXP SP1
should be enough in that case. You could slipstream SP1 into a WinXP
original installer disk, if the original version of WinXP was all you had.
To do that, you'd need a CD burner, to burn the new, slipstreamed image.

Check the BIOS and see what options are available for the SATA ports. At least
one Southbridge, actually doesn't have any options, and vanilla is all it
does.

There are some "catch 22" chipsets out there. I tried looking for drivers
for one laptop, and Vista was it. There wasn't any WinXP driver content
to be found for the chipset, anywhere. So there are some products for
which WinXP is a hard fit. I don't know if some money changed hands,
to make that possible (no WinXP drivers), or a development group
were tightwads enough, not to have a WinXP driver team. So some people
won't be installing WinXP on their shiny new laptops. It is not a
guaranteed thing.

Paul