Clean SATA install...BIOS sees drive, WinXP Pro install does not

Nomadic0ne · October 4th, 2004, 04:30 PM

I have tried practically everything to get this to work!
I have a brand new Maxtor 80gig SATA drive that I bought for my new system and I cannot get the WindowsXP Pro installer to recognise the drive! It just says that there is no HD detected.

I have an ASUS A8V mobo w/ an AMD Athlon 64 3500+ and 1 gig RAM.
I am using an WinXP Pro OEM CD (Genuine article, hologram and all).
*I have tried (I think I may have screwed up though) making a custom install CD w/ the SATA drivers on it, but that did not work.
*I have tried putting the driver files (downloaded fresh from the ASUS website) on a floppy. That would get the installation to load the drivers, but it still would not recognise the drive.
*The hard drive shows up correctly in the BIOS and in various DOS-based partition programs that I have on a bootable CD.
*I've tried it as second and first boot device.
*I've tried disabling the Promise IDE controller.
*I've tried formating it as one big partition in NTFS.
Nothing seems to work!
The Windows install DOES NOT see the drive!!

ANY help/ideas would GREATLY be appreciated!

Regulus · October 4th, 2004, 04:41 PM

If everything else is done right, you may have to install the mobo chipset driver as well as the windows device driver, Win XP came out before SATA drive releases, thus scsi.port and ATA port have no support for them, I have seen several MOBOs with the floppy disk to install the mobo chipset driver and the SATA with its own driver,, the new ATA port with SATA support is to be included in "future" operating systems by Microsoft, yet I have not heard or read wether it will be in Longhorn.
If your running SATA pci card (2.3), this has to be installed at F6 point for immediate boot installation when the op system is being installed, there are other way around this, however, the chipset driver for the pci controller card or pci raid card is a must.
Regulus

Saico · October 4th, 2004, 04:43 PM

press F6 during the begining of the install... hav the floppy with the driver handy. usually the thing u download for the driver will be a program you run to creat the floppy needed during install.

doddsy · October 4th, 2004, 04:44 PM

do you have the textsetup oem file in the root of the floppy with the drivers sata drivers on it?

set up needs this file to read into the directories on the floppy.

doddsy · October 4th, 2004, 04:54 PM

another question are you using the promise controller or the VIA controller?

doddsy · October 4th, 2004, 05:15 PM

if you are using the VIA controller the floppy should look like this

a folder called WinXP

inside the folder 3 files:-

VIAsraid.inf VIAsraid.sys VIAsraid.cat

outside the folder, on the same floppy two files:-

Txtsetup.oem VT8237

all of these files are in this download

Nomadic0ne · October 4th, 2004, 07:11 PM

(Sorry for the delayed reply...I'm at work right now...)

In response to the first couple posts...
The A8V mobo has built in SATA and SATA raid...no PCI cards.
(Click HERE to go to the mobo model page on the ASUS site)
I have already tried placing the drivers on a floppy...both the included CD and also the drivers downloaded from the ASUS website (separate floppies)...and hitting F6 during the install. The downloaded drivers loaded correctly, but the WinXP installer still did not recognise the drive.
Also, I'm using the regular Promise drivers because I'm not setting up a RAID array and the HD is not hooked up to the RAID controller.

I currently have the HD formatted in one large NTFS partition (using a third-party DOS-based partition tool that I can't remember the name of at the moment).
I have tried all of the above both before and after the partition/format.
(I can undo this and either wipe it totally clean again or wipe it and make a new partition in a new format if need be...)

I feel like I'm banging my head against a wall...

doddsy · October 4th, 2004, 07:29 PM

these sata drivers. are sometimes referred to as sata raid controllers. and you will need to install them (F6) for xp to recognise the drive, even if you don't use raid.

i have two sata drives on an asus k8v deluxe (xp home and xp 64)........both os's needed the "sata raid controller" installed from a floppy. i don't have a raid array.

try plugging the drive onto the VIA southbridge sata sockets on your mobo.

then set up the floppy as i suggested. i'm pretty sure it will work.

i've circled the VIA sata sockets in this pic.

Nomadic0ne · October 4th, 2004, 07:34 PM

Hmmmm....ok, gotcha.
I'll try the RAID drivers as soon as I get home.

I already have the drive set up on the first Southbridge SATA socket.

Nomadic0ne · October 5th, 2004, 12:56 PM

Hey, thanks for the tip doddsy!
It worked!!

I had the HD as the first boot device, then hit "F8" to manually select which device to boot from and I booted from the WinXP install CD.
As soon as the installer started I hit "F6" to specify third-party drivers and, when promted, insterted the disk I had made with the downloaded RAID drivers, hit "Enter", and selected the drivers for XP.
It loaded them fine and continued to where it asked you if you wanted to setup Windows or repair.
(Now, I had been able to get up to this point before, but when I would hit "Enter" to setup Windows, it would tell me that it did not detect any HDs and to hit "F3" to exit...)

I held my breath and hit "Enter"...
And the HD came up!

And MAN! Windows installed in about 10 minutes!!
I love this thing!