hey there,

     i have hp pavilion g4 series laptop with amd processor and preinstalled windows 7 in it. the problem is i want to install windows xp alongwith windows 7. i ve created a seperate partition for windows xp while installation. During installation setup loads and copies file into this but when it intialized its installation a stop error with code 0x7b comes on the screen and it makes me to manully start the system again and again but nothig happens. now i am neither able to start windows 7 nor install xp.  i found that my bios doesn't have sata or ide mode that is why it is not installing. now can anybody tell me then how to install windows xp?

The Stop error is the result of an inaccessible boot device (which you are probably seeing briefly flash on the screen). Windows XP would require an OEM driver to access the hard drive during text mode setup because the hard disk controller built into the motherboard is newer than the drivers that shipped with XP, and if the driver isn't there, it can't access the drive.

Quite possibly there has also been some partition changes or corruption, so if you have a Windows 7 recovery disc, you may want to try to boot from that and verify the partition table and other disk structures.

Cuzintone has it pretty right. You don't have a SATA mode option in your BIOS simply because HP decided it was not necessary - they built the thing with a SATA drive, after all. But I'm guessing that your XP installation medium (CD?) does not have the SATA driver slipstreamed into it? And that is why you got the 0x7B error, because the XP installation overwrote the W7 bootloader files on the disk with its own MBR, but without the SATA driver XP cannot read the disk - hence the error and bluescreen. With that driver XP would load, but the only way you can introduce it is with a slipstreamed XP and reinstall XP. Seriously, though, I would not install a dual-booting XP on that machine because I do not think HP make its drivers available for XP, so you will face problems. Best is to run XP in W7 XP mode - read this:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-AU/windows7/install-and-use-windows-xp-mode-in-windows-7
Now to recover your machine. You will need a W7 installation medium, and then simply boot from it and run the Repair - it will automatically fix the bootloader and so W7 will boot again. Not so XP... it still does not have the SATA driver, and it is not straightforward to introduce it via W7.
So, either run your special programs in XP mode in W7, or build a slipstreamed XP medium (installing XP after W7 you will still need to repair the bootloader, but at the same time get it to add XP to the bootlist).

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