Don't get my wrong, my new Toshiba Qosmio laptop is a very nice laptop. It comes pre-installed with Windows Vista Ultimate. I have been using Vista for about a month and finally decided to get around to dual booting with XP and Ubuntu Linux. I figure with my 200GB of hard drive space I could split it 50/50 for each partition.
So I go to install Windows XP, but come across an interesting error. According to XP, this laptop doesn't have a hard drive. Hmm, that is odd, because I am pretty sure Vista has been telling me I have 200GB of hard drive space, and I didn't take the hard drive out.
So then I figure I would try out Linux and see if that works. You know, those Ubuntu Linux discs that have the option to run the OS from the disc and then install it as your OS if you want. But it does act as a Live CD. I figure that this has to work... nope. Not even Linux will boot, it just gives me a really weird error with a bunch of letters and numbers.
At this point I call the Toshiba support and tell the person on the other side of the phone about how XP won't install and that I am having problems. He instantly tells me that it is Microsoft's fault and it has nothing to do with the Toshiba hardware and that I should contact Microsoft supports. But guess what, it isn't Microsoft's fault
So I call back and click my numbers through the automated system to a different area of help at Toshiba. I tell this new person the same thing that I told the other person. He tells me that they reason they don't install is probably because this laptop actually has two 100GB HDDs in RAID. And XP apparently doesn't understand how to do that, at all. And I guess Ubuntu gets confused as well. So I asked him if there were any known ways to get either OS to run on the Qosmio and he told me, "no". They don't offer support on anything except for Vista on this laptop.
If I had known at the time that I got this laptop that I would never be able to install Linux of XP on it, I would have never gotten it. I would have opted for the HP laptop. I guess I am stuck with this laptop until it breaks or I can afford a new one. All I know is that I am never going to be buying a Toshiba laptop ever again. When I had my eMachines, the support for it was better than Toshiba's, and I am completely serious about that.
Moral of the story: Don't buy Toshiba laptops.
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anyhow,
im probably forgetting some of the terminology here, cuz its fucking late, but....
find what the raid device or scsi adapter your laptop is using. download the driver. burn it to a cd or copy to a floppy. boot to the windows xp cd. dusring the beginning of the install it will say, "press F6 if you need to install additional SCSI adapters or other mass-storage devices" on the bottom of the screen. hit f6. after loading some more files it'll ask for the driver. put in the disc and point it to the driver. after all the files are loaded your drive should be available. hopefully, this made some kind of sense. good luck.
if it truly is a RAID and not some proprietary toshiba bullshit, there should be a RAID boot menu right before the system goes into windows. if you are able to rebuild the RAID you can reformat at least one drive as regular IDE, and then you should be able to load any OS on there (even leopard). that's how I did it, now I have twice the hdd space and no RAID. a bit slower but worth the stability. unfortunately I know nothing about vista, but I was able to do it with xp. but that sucks. good luck
only people who dont like it are people who are afraid to try it because they know they will like it... THEY FEAR ITS POWER!!!!
nothing wrong with vista.... WOOP!
Also, try setting your BIOS to not show the pretty graphics and show you all the status messages. Usually, hardware RAID will give you and option to fuck with shit (after the POST). I think my desktop card uses Shift+F1. If you can delete the RAID drive, you might be good as far as Linux is concerned. But you might have a problem when it comes to XP. If your drives are SATA, you're probably fucked. Windows XP install CDs don't have SATA drivers, and you usually need to do the F6 floppy install. It may be possible to get a USB floppy, but I don't think I was ever successful doing that. Hit me up with a private message or hop on IRC if you need more in depth help.
In other words, the problem is because your XP disk doesnt have full SATA compatibility on the install. I have exactly the same problem and its bloody annoying to say the least.
It guides you through creating a new install disk with SATA support built-in.
I used the tutorial at Paul Thurott's Windows site, and it worked for me. Has screenshots, too. My purposes were different, but it seems like it should work in your situation.
Also, people have already stated it, but XP RAID is dick and butt.
go buy a couple and try em out. then return em.
also, check your bios for settings where you can turn off raid and change the sata mode to ide.
and yeah, newer install discs of XP dont generally have this problem. you can try downloading a SP2 install CD and to keep it legal, swap the disc after it loads your HD and use your existing key on it. (not sure how big you are on legality. the place i work is big on it, so im putting that method out there) of course, theres the slipstream method too. just read that up there ;p
Just use nLite to integrate the RAID controller textmode driver into an XP install disc. Burn the disc, boot from it, and the driver will be loaded along with standard devices when XP setup starts up. It's really quite easy.
Good luck.
2) Slipstreaming would probably be the way to go