BSOD when installing Windows XP on ThinkPad x220 [ Edited ]

[Waldo000000]

Hi,

I have just bought a ThinkPad x220 (4293-AA6) with no OS installed. I am trying to install Windows XP (32-bit), but have not yet been successful. 

I have carefully followed section in the User Guide called "Installing Windows XP", but this has not worked for me. In summary, the procedure I followed was:

1. In BIOS, set "Serial ATA (SATA)" to "AHCI", 
2. Set "UEFI/Legacy Boot" to "Both" or "Legacy Only" (makes no difference to my problem)
3. Boot from Win XP SP2 CD
4. Press F6 when prompted, put the Lenovo "Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver drivers" in floppy drive, and select "Intel MobileExpress Chipset SATA AHCI Controller". Drivers were extracted from this file: this file
5. Continue the installation

The result is a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) just after the setup screen says "Setup is starting Windows", with the error message:

"STOP: 0x0000007B (0xf78d2524,0xc0000034,0x00000000,0x00000000)"

Other things I have tried: 

• Followed the alternative procedure outlined in the User Guide, under "If you do not have a diskette drive..."
• Updated the BIOS from 1.15 to 1.17
• Ran memtest86+ (resulted in no errors)
• Tried the "Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver" from the Intel website rather than the Lenovo website
• Selected the "Intel 5 Series 6 Port SATA AHCI Controller" instead of the other one when installing the drivers
• Tried using a WinXP SP3 CD instead of SP2
• Formatted the disk using diskpart
• Installed Ubuntu 11.04 to the harddrive (successfully!!) then tried installing Windows XP again

But I always get the same BSOD.

I have also tried installing Windows 7 (64-bit), which also failed! It booted into the installation program, but then it stopped and said it couldn't find a driver for a CD/DVD drive. After installing the appropriate 64-bit Lenovo IRST driver and rebooting, this resulted in the following Blue Screen of Death: "STOP: 0x000000F4 (0x0000000000000003,..."

Is anyone able to help me with getting Windows (XP or even 7) installed? Any help or ideas would be much appreciated, and I'm happy to provide more information/tests if needed.

Thanks in advance,

Roy

[Waldo000000]

Oh, perhaps I should emphasise that this X220 model comes with the "160GB Solid State Drive". Perhaps that needs a different driver or something...??

[x220forMe]

I can't say about XP but Win7 supports SSD itself. Try the first scenario of Win7 installation.

I wish you success.

[Waldo000000]

Hi, thanks for the advice, but as mentioned in the first post, I've already tried to install Win7 and got another BSOD...

[x220forMe]

It is a very pity.

Look at this support page:

Windows 7 Clean Installation - ThinkPad T420, T420s, T520, W520, X220 and X220 Tablet

Also, if you use USB drive look at followed page where you'll find several advices:

How-to-do-clean-install-of-Windows-7-64bit-from-USB-on-ThinkPad

[lead_org Microsoft MVP Contributor]

you have to set the SATA mode to compatibility when doing generic XP installation.

[Waldo000000]

Re: setting SATA mode to compatibility

Thanks, but as mentioned in the first post, I have tried this already, according to the alternative procedure outlined in the User Guide under "If you do not have a diskette drive..."

Setting the SATA mode to compatibility had exactly the same result

[lead_org Microsoft MVP Contributor]

did you use a cd drive to install the OS?

[billbolton Community Moderator]

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Waldo000000 wrote:
Oh, perhaps I should emphasise that this X220 model comes with the "160GB Solid State Drive". Perhaps that needs a different driver or something...??

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SSDs are Advanced Format disks, which XP does not know anything about.  Please read the white paper which can be found here.....

http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/detail.page?LegacyDocID=MIGR-76990

This will give you guidance on what to do.

Cheers,

Bill

[Waldo000000]

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lead_org wrote:
did you use a cd drive to install the OS?

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Yes, I put the WinXP CD (tried SP2 and SP3, as well as Win7) in a USB CD drive.