Question
I have two R500 ThinkPads that came with Vista Home Basic sp1. I need to install Windows XP Pro sp2 on the laptops but I keep getting a BSOD when I boot from the XP installation cd. The BSOD error is:
A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.
If this is the first time you've seen this Stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps:
Check for viruses on your computer. Remove any newly installed hard drives or hard drive controllers. Check your hard drive to make sure it is properly configured and terminated. Run CHKDSK /F to check for hard drive corruption, and then restart your computer.
Technical information:
*** STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF7C04524, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)
The laptops are both brand new, I did make recovery disks of the vista install, but I really need XP installed on them to work with our system. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Answer
The issue is that XP doesn't have driver support for the SATA AHCI controller on that system. However, you can download that driver here: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-70477
You'll need to extract that and put it in the root of a floppy (yeah, a floppy... looking for the A: drive is hardcoded in to the XP install).
When you boot to the XP CD, press F6 when prompted (it'll say "Press F6 to install third-party SCSI controller" or something similar along the bottom).
Windows will load some files and eventually bring you to a screen with a couple of options. It'll tell you your current controller is "<none>" and allow you to press S to specify a driver. Once you do, it'll scan the A drive and load up the entries from the txtsetup.oem file you extracted from the driver.
The selection you want doesn't show up by default. There aren't any scroll bars, but you can scroll through the list using the arrow keys. You want "Intel(R) ICH9M-E/M SATA AHCI Controller" which is the 7th from the bottom.
Select that, Windows will load it, the install will continue and you'll be golden.
If you don't want to bother with scrolling, you can open the txtsetup.oem file and find this line (near the top):
[Defaults]
scsi = iaStor_ICH8MEICH9ME
Change that to:
[Defaults]
scsi = iaAHCI_ICH9MEM
And the proper controller will be highlighted by default so you don't have to arrow through the list.
If all of that is too much of a pain, you can go in to the BIOS under Config->SATA and change AHCI to Compatibility and load Windows w/o the IMSM driver. Once Windows is loaded, you can install the driver and enable AHCI mode using the install.cmd file in the PREPARE directory of the driver linked above.
Hope this helps.
