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I tried to reinstall Windows XP on my Lenovo S10e netbook, but I got this error:

No previous version of Windows NT can be found on your computer. Setup cannot verify that you qualify to install this upgrade product. To quit setup, press F3

This notebook has no optical drive, so I am installing XP via an USB pendrive.

Hennes
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malakrsnaslava
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  • You say reinstall, but was XP on that computer previously? – Xavierjazz Jul 25 '14 at 15:23
  • Yes it was, I dont know wich service pack – malakrsnaslava Jul 25 '14 at 15:24
  • MS-XP, MS-Vista, MS-Windows7, MS-Windows8, MS-Windows2000 plus some others are all NT. It looks like it is looking for one of these. Microsoft products are proprietary, as such you are not free to use them as you wish. One such lack of freedom is in installing the software, it does not matter that you have paid for it, you have to follow the rules. – ctrl-alt-delor Jul 25 '14 at 15:27
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    You are using an CD with an upgrade from a previous windows installation (e.g. NT or w2k) to XP. If you try to do that on a clean disk (e.g. after repartitioning and formatting) then this will not work. – Hennes Jul 25 '14 at 15:27
  • Also, is that the full error or do you get this? `Setup cannot find a previous version of Windows installed on your computer. To continue, Setup needs to verify that you qualify to use this upgrade product. Please insert your Windows NT 3.51 Workstation, Windows NT 4.0 Workstation, Windows 95, or Windows 98 CD into your CD-ROM drive. When the CD is in the drive, press ENTER. To quit Setup, press F3.` – Hennes Jul 25 '14 at 15:32
  • No, I wrote the full error. – malakrsnaslava Jul 25 '14 at 15:33
  • @Hennes so, you are saying that I should get other XP copy and try again? How should I know wich one is not an upgrade ? – malakrsnaslava Jul 25 '14 at 15:40
  • What I **should** say is "do not install XP. It was [mainstream end of life since 2009](http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/lifecycle). Now, (2014), there are no more public security upgrades for XP. Which means that you should keep computers with XP off the network. Glue shut USB ports to prevent potentially infected pen drives. Remove the wireless card.Poor glue in the wired NIC port, ..." Ofcourse I realise that sometimes you just want an OS on something and that people are not willing to pay for a recent windows OS, nor willing to use one of the many free options (e.g. BSD, Linux). – Hennes Jul 25 '14 at 21:08
  • Just realise that your new XP install will be very vulnerable and never use that netbook with any passwords (e.g. no logging into gmail, no internet banking etc etc). Just running a local game on it without a network is fine though. To get XP on that, consider these options: 1) Get an external USB CDROM and a right OEM XP CD (one from Lenovo, with a key pre-entered in combination with your netbooks BIOS). YOu can probably order these from Lenovo, though they will check if XP was the OS when you bought the netbook. – Hennes Jul 25 '14 at 21:09
  • 2) Get a legal XP CoA en CD combination. That is indeed a regular, normal XP installation CD (preferably one with SP3 included). The CoA is what people often call the 5-part key. Note that these two must match. E.g. a CoA for XP home will not work on an XP home CD. 3) Or better get hold of a legal windows 7 iso. [LEGAL link here](http://superuser.com/questions/78761/where-can-i-download-windows-7-legally-from-microsoft). You will need a legal key for that. which is affordable if you are a student. Than configure win7 to look and act as XP. – Hennes Jul 25 '14 at 21:12
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    Failing all of that, consider Linux, one of the BSDs, or just buy windows 8.1. Just do not use XP. Note that all of these (as well as windows 7) can be installed from an USB pen drive with no need for an optical drive). – Hennes Jul 25 '14 at 21:15

5 Answers5

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Old post. Answering anyways in the hope that nobody will ever need this information since XP is long since dead.

XP and addional drivers:

In order to access a harddrive you need drives for mass storage and drivers for the HDD controller. The first is build into XP. The second might be.

If the driver is already on the XP installation CD then you do not need to do anything. If the driver is not on the standard CD then you have at least two choices:

  1. Create a custom CD with addition drivers (slipstream),
  2. or load the driver during setup. You will be instructed do to this by the installation process with a 'Press F6 to load additional drives'. At that stage you press F6 and insert the floppy with the relevant driver.

XP and AHCI

In the past we used many storage devices. All sorts of SCSI, ESDA, ATA etc etc. For all of these we need drivers. By the time XP reached SP3 the home systems had mostly moved to the ATA interface and there were relative few chipsets. This means almost all drivers for these chipsets could be added to the installation CD and the user got used to things 'just working out of the box'.

This is no longer true with the move to SATA. SATA in it normal AHCI mode is not compatible with IDE/Paralel-ATA. You will need to add drivers. If there ever was a XP SP4 then these would probably be added. However we never got XP SP4. Instead home users moved to Vista, win7 and beyond.

This means that we:

  1. Either need to load a driver. Without driver no harddisk controller and no harddisk behind that controller will be found.
  2. Or we need to set the SATA interface to a slower, less capable mode which is compatible with P-ATA/IDE.

Option 1 is obviously the best, tough you need to come prepared with the right driver on a floppy. And by that time floppy drives had become rare. That means that windows will not find any disk (and no previous NT installation on a disk) when you boot from an XP CD in normal AHCI mode with no added drivers.

This is one possible reason that the OP's installation failed.

An other possible reason is that the OP wiped the disk and used an upgrade CD. The upgrade searches for a previous installation which is no longer there. Obvious fix: Use a regular XP CD.

USB

Lastly there is a booting from USB part. You can boot from an USB pendrive is your firmware (BIOS) supports it. This works if your firmware has some knowledge about how USB and mass storage woks and can emulate it via the old 0x80 interrupt. However after XP initialses it takes over USB and it needs the relevant drivers. Depending on SP and chips used these might not be loaded at that time.

Hennes
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What I did right now was went into my bios and changed the sata mode from achi to compatibility. And I am able to boot the installer is formatting my laptop right now.

ben drinkwine
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If you are booting from USB, change AHCI settings and it will probably start working. This problem has nothing to do with what is displayed as the error message.

Vladivarius
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While installing Windows XP, if Windows could not find a SATA driver then you will get this error

No previous version of Windows NT can be found on your computer. Setup cannot verify that you qualify to install this upgrade product. To quit setup, press F3

This is a Windows XP bug which should display as SATA error instead you get the above message which is very confusing.

In BIOS disable SATA/AHCI etc. Try different options around SATA and AHCI and retry.

Another option is to download the SATA driver for your model and while installing Windows XP - install additional drivers - add the downloaded driver. It should work fine.

sourcebreak
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Had the same Issue on my MSI Laptop If you have SATA hdd in your laptop go to your BIOS and disable AHCI and you are ready to install XP with no problem

Bobo
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  • Thanks, but .. I dont have that laptop any more, so I cannot check it my self, but since question is viewed ~3k times, maybe you should provide some additional information, some source, and solutions for for IDE drives. – malakrsnaslava Mar 13 '15 at 12:03
  • This is because the default XP CD ships without AHCI drivers. You can indeed fall back to legacy mode (and less functionality), but the proper way would be to load a driver for your AHCI chipset. (press F6 and insert the floppy with the driver at the relevant time). This will still require a full XP install CD though, and not an upgrade CD. – Hennes Jun 13 '15 at 11:53