F6 For Drivers

  • Thread starter Thread starter Gert B. Frob
  • Start date Start date
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Gert B. Frob

Building new computer which will need SATA drivers loaded during XP setup
without benefit of a floppy drive. What's the procedure?
 
I was thinking more along the lines of burning the drivers onto CD, but I
don't know if XP works that way. Heck, if it doesn't, a floppy and cable
don't cost much these days. Rather not go that route, though.
 
You HAVE to use a floppy drive in order to load the SATA driver during the
installation of XP.. Microsoft hasn't changed this requirement yet.
 
Gert B. Frob said:
Building new computer which will need SATA drivers loaded during XP setup
without benefit of a floppy drive. What's the procedure?
Click to expand...

If you're not running RAID on the SATA channels, you may get away with a
simple install of Windows XP with service pack 2.

It works 100% on my A8N SLi


Odie
 
MrGrumpy said:
The F6 option only uses a floppy, a cd wont work - other than a
slipstreamed
one
Click to expand...
Actually, it _will_ work on some boards.
It depends how the BIOS emulates CD's. On some machines, the BIOS gives a
CD, a 'floppy' emulation mode. If you can boot a CD, containing DOS, with
no drivers, and when you are in DOS, the CD is seen as drive 'A', then you
can install drivers from a CD. I have done this happily on two Asus boards
in the past, but on others, the drivers have to be 'slipstreamed'.

Best Wishes
 
Actually, it _will_ work on some boards.
It depends how the BIOS emulates CD's. On some machines, the BIOS gives a
CD, a 'floppy' emulation mode. If you can boot a CD, containing DOS, with
no drivers, and when you are in DOS, the CD is seen as drive 'A', then you
can install drivers from a CD. I have done this happily on two Asus boards
in the past, but on others, the drivers have to be 'slipstreamed'.

Best Wishes
Click to expand...

Actually, that's what I was thinking would work, if anything. I'll try
making a floppy and then burning a "bootable" CD using it as the boot
floppy. This should cause the floppy image to be seen as A:. I'll post
results, as there doesn't seem to be a consensis.

Thanks Roger and thanks all.
 
If you're not running RAID on the SATA channels, you may get away with a
simple install of Windows XP with service pack 2.
Click to expand...

If you're not running RAID on the SATA channels, you certainly WILL
(not "may") be able to install XP on a SATA drive, as long as it's
connected to the nVidia SATA connectors and not the SATA_RAID
connectors.

Ron
 
Certain boards also allow for a USB "device" to emulate a floppy drive. On
my P4C800-E-Dlx, I can even boot off of the USB flash devices.
 
Slipstreaming CD's works a treat.
We use this to re-build from scratch sepcial servers so that we never have
to take backups of them - its as fast if not faster for us to do a reinstall
from scratch from a slipstream than to do a restore of a possibly
compromised backup.

I recommend that anyone that has an XP original (or XP with SP1 issue CD)
and uses SP2 create a slipstream CD with SP2 included and also include any
essential drivers and use that as the standard install CD instead.

There are many products out (free ones) that will do the slipstream process
for you. Some provide the opportunity to easily include extra drivers,
critical updates (so you are starting with a much more current system), and
many other stock features such as pre-configuring how you want windows
installed, where, what options and so on.

I recommend doing a google on "Slipstream XP" (without the quotes), research
the products offered and reviews and give it a go. It is easy. It is not too
difficult at all to do it manually either.

These comments apply equally to many of the other Windows products in
particular Windows 2003 Server family.

- Tim
 
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