Fujitsu / Phoenix BIOS issue...

I have a Fujitsu Lifebook e-8110 laptop with a Phoenix BIOS that seems to be locking the hard drive. I don't want to access the data on the hard drive, i want to reformat it and install XP.

When I boot off the XP cd, I get to the screen where I select a new installation, and then it says there are no hard drives detected.

In the BIOS, it shows the hard drive. In the manual for the BIOS, there is a reference to BOOT SECTOR Protection must be set to NORMAL to install an OS, but there is no place in the BIOS (v1.24) that allows me to change that setting.

I can install Ubuntu Linux without an issue.

I pulled a second drive from another machine and put it in this laptop to attempt to use it - the machine locked that hard drive too. Can't even put it into an external enclosure and access it.

I'm willing to buy a new hard drive, but am afraid it will get locked too.

Any suggestions/solutions would be really appreciated...

Thanks
Steve

XP doesn't have native support for SATA, which is the hard drive type in your laptop. You can try slip-streaming to integrate the needed drivers into your XP disk as described here or you first can try disabling the SATA and/or AHCI settings in the bios, shown on page 15 here (pdf) which may work and would definitely be simpler.