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Long story short...

Bought a Toshiba Satellite A135-S4467 off eBay, bought this (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236498) HDD for it. Even bought the recover discs from Toshiba so I can reinstall the original Vista OS since the key was still on the back of the laptop.

What I didn't know was that this thing, Advanced Format, existed for hard drives. That said, this "feature" was halting the installation of windows. Got as far as the initializing for the first time thing before getting a popup which read...

(Windows Setup could not configure Windows to run on this computer's hardware.)

Anyway, no matter what I tried I can't get this POS to work. So I requested RMA on the drive and now am here seeking your guys help in finding a 500Gb SATA drive on NewEgg that I can use in this laptop that is not an Advanced Format drive.

Anything not priced higher than $60 would suffice but would prefer around the $40 -  $50 range sine this POS AF drive I have now cost me $50.

Ty.

Goto BIOS. Enable AHCI, IDE, and/or "Compatibility mode" - or whatever's closest to that in peripherals/storage/boot page. Save, exit, install Windows.

Send $40 in BTC to 1FMy3pRj8PUo6758seX6E9AQHBCJrcsMH8

ty.  :P

ETA: This isn't supposed to happen on Vista, only Win7. Advanced Format isn't defective at all, just a hardware improvement. There was a problem with Intel drivers Microsoft bundled.

LOL. This is a very simple solution however I don't see what this happens to do with newegg.

I would send ~.09 just for the witty response if I had the money.

There's no reason why that HD shouldn't work. Do a clean format on the drive, don't add any partitions to it (even if blank), set BIOS to boot from HD first, change IDE to SATA, install windows.

That's just it, it's a locked BIOS so I need an unlocked BIOS to set ACHI / IDE... otherwise I have to do some driver shit I keep failing on. I think I failed though because I didnt use a USB boot to install drivers when I was trying to do load drivers from the recovery media.

Edit: When I try to boot from a freshly formated drive it says bootmgr missing ctrl+alt+delete to restart.

I think that Kluge just explained to the OP how to fix the situation.

^no good if option is grayed out in BIOS.

OP - you are using an unmodified Vista CD to install, yeah? If you're using some Toshiba-modified version and don't have access to a normal Windows installation disk, your best might actually be to download a pirate .torrent of Vista, then use your key for it.

Recovery discs from toshiba that would have otherwise shipped with the laptop when it was new.

Like I said in the main post, it does the initializing for the first time thing then it gives that "error" about hardware and everything I looked up points the cause to the drive being Advanced Format an talks about the AHCI in BIOS my laptop doesnt have or using RST drivers which I think I screwed up when trying.

Sorry - made a late edit. You might want to try downloading a .torrent of Vista if you have a fast connection. "Normal" Vista shouldn't have the bad driver on it.

Well, the key is still on the bottom of the laptop. But FWIW, isn't there a way I can still use the recovery discs ? I paid $30 for them, and since the AHCI thing is out of the question. The driver thing should work if I can just figure out how to do it properly.

I have a USB boot drive I can use if needed.

Not against torrents, just always end up with infected ones.

So... if I can use the toshiba discs with whatever drivers I need to install using the proper method to do so then I should be G2G with everything.

Yeah - if you can load the drivers before installation, you're fine. I go off on a tangent easily. :-[ :D

If you can't convert your Vista installation discs to a USB version (where you can replace the driver with newer version, though I'd assume you'd be just as fine simply deleting the faulty driver), you'd need to put the updated Intel driver on a floppy disk (I'm going by Intel's info, here, which seems wrong -- you can't load drivers from a USB key if you load the Win setup from a CD?). Since I don't even know anyone with a floppy disk, anymore, your options, I'd guess, would be trying to put the Toshiba-modified CDs onto a USB key using the Windows CD/USB tool or downloading a "clean" version of Vista from a .torrent site.

This is what I was thinking it would work... assuming the exe will run from the dos that comes up on the USB boot.

1) Install / run recovery software.
2) Reboot the system but dont let it goto full boot where the initializing firs time thing comes up. Otherwise the recovery discs have to be run all over again.
3) Hit F12 to get boot menu, select USB boot drive.
4) Once prompt is up, run the drivers exe file.
5) Pray it worked, reset system and this time let it goto full boot / to the initializing for the first time thing.

FWIW, can you try and locate a clean torrent for me with instructions on how to use it from my USB boot drive please ?

This way I have that if I need to use it.

Ty.

this is not newegg's fault. the solution is simple as pointed out in this thread. also, you could have downloaded an OEM version of vista instead of buying a disc.

Well, it seems the solution that might work best for me is a torrent which I am talking about in PM's with kluge. I tried the driver thing and it seems I can't run driver exe's from the USB boot prompt.

Here's hoping I can get this damn system up with kluge's help.

Problem solved with kluges help, just finalizing some small stuff via PM but the system is up and running on the AF drive as of 15mins ago.