Og said:
Copy the SATA driver on a floopy disk.
Early in the installation of Windows XP you will see a brief message to
"Press F6 to install other devices".
Press "F6" and put the floopy disk in the floopy drive.
Steve
Visitor No 3 said:
On your motherboard CD in drivers, you need to make a floppy of all the
drivers in there. In mine, which is an ASUS K8V-X SE, there is a utility
called Makedisk. This copies the appropriate files automatically. When you
do WinXP set-up, press F6 to install additional drivers. Eventually, it
will
ask you to put the floppy in drive A. After that, you should return to
your
inner harmony.
In ASUS, beware. The SATA drivers are not defined, they are all bunched up
with the RAID drivers. If you just do a straight copy, it won't work. You
need to use their utility.
Incidentally, what MoBo do you have?
Cindy:
I assume from your description that the SATA HD is the only HD in your
system and that you are attempting to install the XP operating system onto
that HD. So I'm further assuming that you've been able to post your message
to this newsgroup using some other computer.
Assuming I have all that right, it would seem that Steve's (or Og's)
analysis of your problem and its fix is the correct one. But let me flesh it
out a bit.
Unfortunately, SATA hard drives do not have the same more-or-less universal
recognition by the system that the PATA hard drives have had all these
years. (PATA drives, in case you don't know, are the hard drives most of us
have been using over the years up to the advent of the SATA ones. PATA
drives are connected to one or the other IDE connectors on the motherboard,
usually through a wide, ribbon-type cable). So depending upon the
motherboard, a SATA HD may or may not be automatically recognized by the
system. When they are not, as apparently is the case you've encountered, a
SATA driver (actually controller) must be installed at the time the XP OS is
being installed onto that drive.
Hopefully, a floppy disk containing the required driver/controller for a
SATA HD was included with your motherboard. If not, the driver/controller
file will be included on the motherboard's installation CD. You will need to
consult the motherboard's user guide for information as to how you can
access the file and copy it to a floppy disk.
As Steve (Og) has indicated, when you boot with the XP installation CD,
following XP's initial installation of the various files that will be noted
at the bottom of your monitor's screen, a message will come up to press F6
if you need to install controllers. Do so.
After Setup finishes installing another portion of the setup files, a
message will appear indicating "Setup could not determine the type of one or
more mass storage devices installed in your system, or...". One option will
be to press "S" to "Specify Additional Device". Do so.
After pressing "S" a message will appear asking you to "insert the disk
labeled Manufacturer-supplied hardware support disk into Drive A:...".
Insert the floppy disk containing the driver (controller) file and press
Enter.
A message will appear stating that "You have chosen to configure a SCSI
Adapter for use with Windows...", and the driver (controller) will be listed
and highlighted. If more than one driver is listed, highlight the one
indicating it's for XP. Press Enter.
A message will appear indicating "Setup is loading files..." Press Enter.
Setup will continue to load the remainder of the XP setup files and the OS
can now be installed on your SATA HD.
(Note: During the installation you may receive a warning that the
driver/controller "has not passed Windows Logo testing..." You can safely
ignore this warning message and continue with the XP install.)
So the key here is that you need the SATA/RAID driver file that will be
available from your motherboard's installation CD and copy that file onto a
floppy disk and then go through the F6 routine as described above. Different
motherboards promote different ways of accessing the necessary driver. As
I've previously indicated some motherboards will be accompanied by a floppy
disk containing the driver. With others the necessary file is within a
Drivers folder that you have to access. And as "Visitor No. 3" indicates a
separate utility may be available on the motherboard's installation CD. The
important thing is to read the user guide or manual for your particular
motherboard.
It's hard to understand how & why the industry couldn't come up with a
standardized SATA installation routine that could be employed without the
need of this floppy disk nonsense, especially in view that so many of the
new computers are not equipped with floppy disk drives. (There are some
hacks that presumably avoid the necessity of using floppy disks to install
the SATA drivers by using a XP/SATA drivers slipstreamed installation CD,
but the reports we've received indicate this process hasn't been
particularly reliable). It is true that more & more of the newer
motherboards are coming with (in effect) built-in SATA drivers so that's a
leap forward. And our understanding is that with the forthcoming release of
the Vista OS this stupid (there's no other way to describe it in my view)
floppy disk install process will be a thing of the past in that the
installation of SATA drives will proceed as smoothly as the present
installation of PATA drives. Small comfort to us now I know. But I fear we
have to live with what we've got.
Anna
