Encrypted Drive Not Recognized When Installing XP

[SW20 MR2]

I have an old Lenovo T61 work laptop where the drive was encrypted using PGP encryption. I want to reinstall a fresh copy of Windows XP on it, but the drive is not being recognized during the setup process. I've tried wiping the drive clean using DBAN but it still doesn't work. Do I have any other options or do I need to replace the drive?

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Harvey]

If your machine can boot to an external floppy or USB drive, boot to a DOS boot disk that includes FDISK.EXE, and enter FDISK /MBR. No guarantees, but it's worth trying.

You could also try removing the drive and connecting it to another machine as a slave just to see if can be recognized. A SATA/IDE to USB 2.0 adapter like this one is handy for doing this.

Link and pics are for reference. I have a similar piece, but no experience with this particular model.

Hope that helps.

 

[Level_1]

Try changing the SATA mode to compatibility in bios. The default should be AHCI, for that to work you need to load the driver(download the driver to a floppy, hit F6 at the begin of install to load it).

 

[SW20 MR2]

Thanks!

I changed the setting in the bios (didn't download anything), and it worked fine. Can I leave it in this setting permanently?

Try changing the SATA mode to compatibility in bios. The default should be AHCI, for that to work you need to load the driver(download the driver to a floppy, hit F6 at the begin of install to load it).