Hello pcpaul and welcome to PCHF,

Can you please post back with your laptop make and model.

Thanks, Clever_Duck

Oh yeah sorry.

Toshiba Satellite Pro L300D-11N

Before you get to carried away, have you downloaded all of the required drivers for Win XP from Toshiba, these include the motherboard drivers, sound device, graphics card etc.

With out these, you are going nowhere fast. It is far easier to get to like Vista in the end...

The 0x7B is an "INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE" error. This means that it requires the SATA/RAID controller drivers for XP to be able to see the drive, as XP was released a couple of years before SATA. These are loaded at the very start of Windows Setup. With Vista, these drivers do not need to be loaded because they are already part of the setup CD.

Although I can understand why many are not too keen on Vista, you might find it easier to request the XP downgrade CD from Toshiba, as the driver is not currently available from the Toshiba web site (Download drivers:). It may be available from a separate web site such as Intel. Look in Device Manager (Start > Control Panel in Classic View > System > Hardware tab), to find out the exact model of your SATA Controller.

By using your own XP CD, you'll not only need that driver (which you'll need a floppy disk, or you'll have to create an XP slipstream CD with Service Pack 2 or 3 using nLite), but also the drivers that Arctos mentioned. You'll need to contact Microsoft and let them know you are downgrading, otherwise you'll be in breach of license agreement. Make sure you have the rights to downgrade as well (http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...ion-020707.pdf). It's far easier to get hold of the downgrade CD if you can. It normally only a few quid from what I remember when you purchase the laptop. Not sure how much this will be separately.

Also, just a reminder, Windows 7 is out soon!

Ok thanks guys

Let us know how you get on paul