Installing Windows XP: Without Sata Drivers & Without Floppy Drive

Hi guys,
I'm trying to install Windows XP on my newly built PC. It has a Maxtor DiamondMax 9 80gig SATA hard drive. So I boot up my PC, set everything up in BIOS then put my Windows XP disk in. It gets to the point where it says it cannot detect my hd. I have a CD & Floppy with SATA Drivers on here, but I have no floppy drive. So what I am wanting to do is install the SATA drivers with the cd and not the floppy. Is this possible?

Thanks

wat motherboard do u have. make sure the bios detects the hard drive. if the bios detects the HD then it should work. if it doesn't then it might either be the HD is messed up or the motherboard.

Same problem with Seagate 160GB SATA and Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe (both new ones).

I found DiscWizard Starter Edition (ISO CD) and did the setup for HD. It went OK.
But BIOS didn't found my HD and when I continued CD as a primary boot device, I got error: NTLDR is missing - press c+a+d to boot.
Then I installed XP and its working. But still BIOS doesn't detect SATA Hard Disk?
Why? What should be done?

Does it harm HD if do partition many times with DWSE, for different sizes? (did it twice)

The BIOS does not detect the HD at all, it detects the CD-RW fine, but not the HArd drive. Everything seems set up fine, the mobo is the Abit NF7-S v2.0 nForce2 (Socket A) Motherboard. Any ideas?

I have two 200GB WD SATA drives and I want to install Windows XP Pro on a 20GB partition on one of them.
I have set my BIOS to enable SATA and also to keep them on the BASE setting not RAID. (Seperate drives)
When installing XP I am assuming I can use a disk of some sort and load the SATA drivers, as the basic Win XP cd does not have the drivers.

OK -- i had same problem

Right

1. Get drivers from seagate for your SATA drive (they fit on 1 floopy disk if i remember)

2. Boot your computer

NOTE: SATA drives should NOT Show up in the bios, they should show up on the RAID controllers screen just after this
(this one got me at first)

3. Put XP setup in, boot to that by pressing a key etc.
4. When the setup is loading press f6 when prompted at the bottom of the screen (within the first 30 seconds of booting to the CD) to configure your drive (it says SCSI but SATA / SCSI are closely linked).

NOTE: Nothing will appear to happen and you may think you missed it, XP will load some files then bring up a hard disk configure option screen -- press S to specify i device i think it is

5. put the driver disk in -- XP needs drivers for the device as SATA was out AFTER XP was launched

6. Pick your device from the list

and hey presto, should be working fine!

shaun_341@hotmail.com if you have any problems

Hmm. Is there any other way?
I don't have a floppy disk drive. I would prefer never touching one again.

/me considers abandoning windows and installing a single Linux install instead

heh. this thread is funny b/c no one replies to the questions except other n00bs, so it just goes around in circles. not that i have any solutions though

I was replying to this question...

04-23-2004, 05:28 AM
JudgeNik URL vbmenu_register("postmenu_231355", true);
n00b DevH'er
Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 2


Grr
I have two 200GB WD SATA drives and I want to install Windows XP Pro on a 20GB partition on one of them.
I have set my BIOS to enable SATA and also to keep them on the BASE setting not RAID. (Seperate drives)
When installing XP I am assuming I can use a disk of some sort and load the SATA drivers, as the basic Win XP cd does not have the drivers.




actually.

Is it possible for you to burn a CD with the SATA drivers on it and load them from it?

How about you burn the drivers to a CD.

Linux should be no problems if you're not a gamer. And dont give me that BS that you can still game decenty with linux. No gamer that I know would run a linux system unless they had a windows dual boot.

I don't think i can get the windows installer cd out during installation. And even if I could I think the installer only looks at a floppy disk drive there is no option to specify location.

I am installing Gentoo linux on a partition at the moment and it detected the harddrives perfectly. Knoppix (cd based linux) loaded absolutely perfectly, only thing I had to do was set network settings and it ran everything off my Sata drives fine and did everything that would take Windows a day of setting up to do.

Hello, I've been trying to install this damn sata hard drive for like 2 days now. I did all the steps but when I get to the point of selecting which drive to install windows on, my sata drive is not one of the options, it's a brand new WD 36.7 gig hard drive on an asus a7n8 e deluxe mother board. Somebody even told me that I have to use partition magic to format it first and even partion magic doesn't see the drive, it doesn't show up in the bios or in windows setup. I tried two different sata slots I checked the jumpers (it's on second set from the right) Can anybody help me!?

The only way to install windows on a SATA drive is to get SATA drivers on a floppy disk.

I decided using a floppy disk drive was too disgusting and I brought a 200GB PATA drive instead to install my operating systems on.


Note to SATA users: I have also noticed that although SATA is not a new technology it seems to be unstable, maybe because of the increase of demand on the drives. I have seen two 4 month old drives die and have to be replaced. There have also been a multitude of reports of dead SATA drives. If you do buy SATA at this stage I'd advise definately getting 3 years warranty for the drive.

I have the sata drivers on floppy disks and I pressed f6 during installation and I pressed s and than I put in the floppy disks in the a drive and than it doesn't show up in the list of hard drives to install windows on.. HELP!