yeh, thanks Paul.

You have been the closest with a solution so far!! I can tell you are
probably over 40 ))

The issue was as follows:
Compaq Presarios use a proprietary SATA adaptor. XP did not ship with this
driver included on the install CD... hence the BSOD. It could not see the
drive.

I have managed to find a 'slipstreamed' XP install ISO file on the net that
has had these drivers added. I burned the ISO to DVD, powered up and it
installed FIRSZT SHOT!!

Thanks for your time
Regards
Peter Butler
Johannesburg, SA


"Paul" wrote in message
news
news://news.aioe.org wrote:
Yes, I know this is basic stuff.

So I originally had Win10 running on a client's Compaq laptop. It was a
bit
top heavy(and very buggy) so I installed Ubuntu. Clean and VERY fast. but
the client does not like it (

I have used gparted to remove VISTA and Win10 to reload XP on various
machines,
so I deleted the partition using gparted and the original WinXP disc
will NOT install. It does boot and starts copying files... but then the
DBSOD!!!

I have now tried various different levels of format, including Remake
Boot
Sector... but still the same Dreaded Blue Screen of Death.

There are minimal options in BIOS... and the install disc installs
perfectly
well on another machine?

What am I missing??

The nice thing is, the Command Prompt "diskpart" program
has a disk cleaner. Various installer CDs or DVDs, have a
repair or recovery option which gives access to Command Prompt.
And you use commands like this from the [administrator] Command Prompt.

diskpart

list disk
select disk 0
list partition # This is just a step in verifying you have
# selected the right disk drive, and haven't
# made a stupid mistake. If you clean the
wrong
# disk *you will be sorry*. Trust me.

clean all === zeros every sector, MBR included
=== can take a couple hours
exit

The thing is, the WinXP installer disc, might not like it if
it sees a GPT protective MBR setup. The partition table has
0xEE and a size that occupies the entire disc, and this GPT
design is meant to "thwart" attempts by non-GPT OSes to do
stuff from a partitioning perspective.

My experience is, zeroing the MBR is not enough. You can remove
the 0xEE partition and replace the partition type with 0x00. But
some utilities, the scanner types, will "detect" GPT is present,
and start insisting that GPT-type stuff be done to the drive.

To stop these incidents from happening (i.e. don't leave the "smell"
of GPT on the drive, because it will hamper future data recovery
efforts on the drive), for a home user, a simple "clean all", then
sit back for two hours, and your drive will be "factory fresh" and
"without history". After a "clean all", TestDisk will no longer spot
phantom partitions. This makes data recovery easier later.

Now you can shove in that WinXP CD and install.

If your BIOS hardware setting is set to AHCI on the SATA port,
WinXP doesn't have a driver for that. You can switch to Native
or Compatible IDE emulation, then do the install. Or, you
can hunt down the correct txtsetup.oem flavor of AHCI driver
for your Intel Southbridge. Note that Intel is no longer generous
with this flavor of support. Putting WinXP on new hardware, is
getting more difficult now. At one time, it was a breeze
(back when Intel cared).

Paul