Hi everyone-

I have a Sager 4750 which I finally decided to wipe clean and start fresh.

I set the BIOS to boot from the CD, and then I deleted the whole HDD with DBAN. Worked well. I then installed XP-Pro (old version, no SP2) and I had the following issues:

1. Never saw any prompt for installing drivers;
2. Video works somewhat (I can see stuff in the monitor, but the resolution, etc is not what it should be). I checked on the "settings" in Control Panel and I didn't see some options that were there before.
3. USBs work, but they are not identified as USB 2.0 as they should (I used a 2.0 Flash stick and I got a message telling me "you're using a fast device on a slow USB, etc etc...").
4. No sound.
5. No Internet.
6. Who knows what else.

I concluded I had done something wrong, so I am repeating the process. This time I will use XP-Pro SP2, just in case.

I have all the drivers, downloaded from the Sager website, and burned in a CD.

I have BIOS 2.02, obtained from Sager and burned as an ISO on its own CD.

What should I do now? My main questions are:

1. In what order should I do things?
2. When does the new BIOS file come into play? How do I "upgrade" the BIOS?
3. In what order should I install the drivers?

Most important, is there something that I am doing really wrong here?

Thanks for any help.

OK, it's done. This is how I did it.

This is meant to be a GUIDE FOR REFORMATTING A SAGER 4750, FOR CLUELESS PEOPLE LIKE ME.

BEFORE even starting, BEFORE you format, make sure you have this:
a) Windows installation CD
b) CD with UNCOMPRESSED drivers, which you can download from http://www.sagernotebooks.com. The things you download from the Sager website are COMPRESSED. It's better if you UNCOMPRESS them now.
c) CD with BIOS 2.02 or higher, from Sager. Take the file Sager sends you, and make a CD with it. IMPORTANT: Choose "BURN DISC FROM IMAGE" from the "FILE" menu in any CD burning software.

Now that you are ready, do the following:

1. Set the BIOS to boot from the CD drive first.
2. I wiped my HDD clean, using DBAN. It's pretty easy. I wish there were instructions for everything as there are in the DBAN website.
3. With my HDD totally EMPTY, I installed Windows.
4. With Windows in place and running, upgrade the BIOS. Reboot your computer with the upgraded BIOS image CD in the CD tray. It should read the CD first, and then you just follow the instructions.
4. Once Windows is installed, it seems to have a default system just so the computer is usable. It's time to INSTALL THE DRIVERS.
5. Since you have a CD with the UNCOMPRESSED drivers, just pop in that CD and go driver by driver, clicking the SETUP button.
6. You can reboot every time a driver finishes. I just chose to reboot later, and waited until everything was installed. I rebooted in the end, and everything worked like a charm.

Everything seems to be working fine. Now, for some reason, Internet Explorer is nowhere to be found. That's the next challenge.