What could be more annoying than buying a laptop without a preinstalled operating system, or DOS, and suddenly realizing that you cannot install Windows XP on it because the installation process does not detect your hard drive? You probably wonder why that happens. Well, a simple explanation is that the hard disk in your laptop is connected through Serial ATA (SATA) and the Windows kit you have available has no drivers to recognize this type of hard drive (unfortunately, many of us face this situation).

What should you do?
There are several solutions that are applied frequently. In the next few lines I will introduce you to the steps of the simplest one, which is related to making some changes in BIOS. However, the obvious disadvantage of this is that if the BIOS is limited, it is very likely for you to not have access to the option mentioned in step 2 below. So if you do not find that option you must look for an alternative.

How is it done?
1. Immediately after you start the laptop press F2 or Del key (or another key – a message should appear on the screen immediately after switching on the laptop) to be able to enter BIOS.
2. Look for an option named SATA Native or AHCI Mode and change it by choosing Disable or ATA Mode, depending on the type of the BIOS you have.
3. Save the changes in the BIOS (usually by pressing F10) and reboot the computer.
4. Now when you boot your laptop from Windows XP CD you will see your HDD being recognized, and you will be able to install Windows XP normally. Basically, Windows XP sees and works with the HDD now as it would be an ATA one and not SATA.
5. After you finished installing Windows XP, you need to update the driver for your HDD with a SATA driver. In order to do this, open the Control Panel -> System -> Hardware -> Device Manager tool. In the Device Manager window, expand Disk Drives and right click on the disk from the list that appears. Select Update Driver, select Not at this time when you are asked to connect to Windows Update, choose Install from the window next to the list or specific location, and in the next window look for the directory where you put the SATA drivers and select it. Press Next, reboot your laptop, let it load the whole operating system again and then shut down. Restart your laptop and enter the BIOS again. Finally, replace the SATA type hard disk, making the reverse of step 2 (i.e., return to SATA Native or AHCI mode). Everything should work fine now.

Google Desktop is one of the useful software when you need to search the contents of the files on your computer. However, if you have old XP configuration (I am saying old but it still works much better than Vista), it may slow down your computer to boot up. Whenever you need to use Google Desktop, you can prevent starting up Google Desktop. Here is how to do:

1- Click Start+Run and type “msconfig” then hit enter

2- Unclick on Google Desktop under Startup section,

With this way, you can control how Google Desktop starts.

Windows XP is undoubtedly the most useful and widely used operating system used in pc computers. However, while installing new programs, new registry settings allow them to start  without user’s permission whenever the computer is booted. Here is a tip how to prevent and remove unwanted programs to start in Windows.

1- From Window Start+Run, type msconfig to open System Configuration Utility

2- From Startup tab, uncheck the programs that you want to get rid of

3- Make sure that you don’t remove the critical programs from the list that can cause system instability.

4- Restart the computer. This tip should allow the computer to boot faster.

5- Check the Task Manager to see any other programs that you like to get rid of and repeat the procedure for those programs.

For more information about the computer .tips, please visit CleanPC.org or browse our website.