Can't get XP Image to work on SATA Native Mode enabled drive

G

Grimmda

2[H]4U
Joined
Jul 1, 2003
Messages
3,130
We just got the NC6320 HP Laptop as a replacement for our NC6120 HP Laptop and it of course has a SATA drive in it. WELL I'm not having a lot of luck thus far.

I was able to update my BartPE boot disk by adding some things to the txtsetup.sif file based on this afticle:
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg00288.html

So then I can use my standard image to ghost the laptop, but when I try to boot it up, of course the SATA drivers aren't in that image so it doesn't want to boot up properly to XP.

SO I re-imaged the laptop and before booting to it went in with PE and modified the sysprep.inf to try and add the intel SATA device but NO LUCK... I just can't get it to come up IF I HAVE SATA NATIVE SUPPORT ENABLED in the bios (which is the default the laptop ships as).

I'm not even sure if modifying the sysprep.inf is the correct thing to do with these SATA drives or not. Any googe'ing I attempt to do don't talk a lot about working with sysprep.
(Mainly just txtsetup.sif and unattended.txt which aren't used with sysprep)

If I shut off SATA Native support my image works and what not but I want it to work out of the box if possible!!!

My image is a sysprepped beauty that works on ANY IDE systems (desktop or laptop) out there and even an HP DC5100 which is SATA but the built in drivers from XP work on it so go figure.

(djnes, this thread started out as PM to you, but I changed my mind, so get your butt outta genmay and look at my thread!)
 
I thought my [H]ardPager was going off. Dr. Djnes...paging Dr. Djnes...please report to Grimmda's thread ASAP.

I'm not to familiar with BartPE, so I can't say if there's an error somewhere with that....but it sounds like something was changed from the default SATA settings, making this not work. I'd be willing to bet that if you took a plain old XP SP2 disc and tried to install XP on that laptop, you wouldn't need to add any drivers for it to work. Before I left HP, I had an nc6220 which was, I believe, SATA, and that worked from a basic XP disc.

I'm in the same boat as you though. I started working as the IT Manager at a small company, and I'm in the process of building their first ever set of re-imaging discs. I haven't come across a PC yet that uses SATA, but I might have to test mine out at home soon. I'm building a test machine for myself here as well, that will use SATA drives.
 
Well BartPE totally works so if you ever get to a point you want something like that, just modify your txtsetup.sif (works on all PE enviroment boot discs as I read).

I'm booting the thing up now on a XP/SP2 disc to try it out. I'll post back in a few when I find a few more things out about that.

(I have tried before with this laptop last week with the xp/sp2 disc and hitting F6 to load the SATA Driver and it would start doing it and then randomly fail for one reason or another. I thought it was a bum disc so I burned a new one and it did about the same thing. This time I'll try it with SATA Native turned on and without hitting F6 to load the driver but I don't think it's going to see this drive in the XP Setup.)

Thanks for the fast response my man!
 
Actually, if native is turned on you shouldn't have to do the F6 thing, so your last post there about trying it without the keystroke should work.

If the interface is handled by the motherboard, it shouldn't appear any different to Windows as it's being installed. The only time you need to do the F6 thing is when there is an add-on card involved.

Let me know how it turns out, as I'm curious.
 
Um... Ok then one of us is confused: it's probably me!

In the bios is a setting that says "SATA Native Mode" and either Enabled/Disabled.

Enabled (Default out of box setting)
-My image without true SATA Support does NOT boot up - trying to fix that here
-I MUST hit F6 in XP install disc (XP pro/Corp) for it to even see the hard drive. I just verified this.

Disabled (Trying to avoid this setting because it's a manual effort for a technician to change it and I'm losing functionality of SATA somehow?)
-My image totally works, boots up, all is good.
-I can totally install XP install disc (XP Pro/Corp) without having to hit F6

Maybe I should go google what the heck SATA Native mode even is HAHA
 
How is having the setting disabled not giving the full functionality of SATA? As far as I was aware, all disk activity occurrs on the HDD itself, and the mechanics of the HDD (and cache size, blah blah) have to do with its performance, not any sort of motherboard switch.

Sounds like finding out what this "native mode" thing is could be the best course. I thought you were referring to native as in the same way IDE channels are native on a board. That should require no more user intervention.
 
Appreciate the help... but um, are you asking me a question in the last thread?

I think you're questioning why disabling that setting could cause performance degradation and the only thing I can think of is maybe stepping down the bandwidth somehow because a specific device isn't being shown to XP (and in turn I'm not giving it a driver) so now it's works slower?

Example
Just like the old IDE hard drives with ATA100 if you were running PIO mode or something crappy like that technically it was an ATA100 drive but it certianly wasn't running that way.

Then it looks like you agree with me on finding out what Native Mode even means HAHA :)
 
I tried having Sata Native Enabled and hitting F6 at startup then going into my drive installation and hitting enter to "repair" (the second repair option) the install to see if it would lay that driver down and BAM it asks me for an Intel Matrix Storage Manager driver, ok...

Oh boy this is annoying.

So I tried this the other day and the 5.7 version is just the same files I had on a floppy that work when hitting F6 yet now it's not seeing those as the correct Intel Matrix driver (Which I thought was an INSIDE windows XP driver).

The 6.0 driver never extracts anything from intels download/website for me to work with! just a couple of cab files I can't open with IZARC DANGIT!
 
Yeah, I agree that finding out what the Native Mode means is step one.

However, on the other thing I don't think there would be any bandwidth issues the way ATA100 vs 133 were handled, because SATA wouldn't be backwards-standardized to IDE in terms of bandwidth due to it being a whole different bus. Either it's off or on. This might be a difference where SATA and SATA2 is concerned, but then the question would be: is the drive you're talking about SATA or SATA2?

The lowest common denominator either way is SATA, so you would at least be getting the SATA benefits regardless. The key is that it is a whole different bus than IDE, so you wouldn't be getting simply IDE speeds without some switch turned on stating otherwise. If you're on a SATA bus, then you would be getting SATA performance. Anything else is something extra added by the manufacturer of the board and not the standard.
 
Gotcha... I've asked the question to our HP Provider: Pomeroy.

So I went and tried some other Intel Matrix drivers and it's all a ball of crap because no matter WHAT floppy I put in the laptop's external USB drive at this point it never query's it!!! Sure, it worked when I did the F6 thing and it pulled the SATA driver but now, Noooo it doesn't even look at the drive!

I'm THIS close to giving up and telling the techs to just disable it in the bios...
 
Figured I'd try this:

Disable Sata Native Mode

Load up my image, booted up just fine.

Tried to load the Intel Matrix Storage Manager Driver (v 5.5 or 6.0) and NEITHER of them work because of course it isn't seeing the SATA Native support... GACK!

Figured I'd get that installed then enable native support but no luck now.

Going to just install XPSP2 core with F6 to try and load the sata driver and take a look and see if I can get anything from that.

And it would be a TON of work to re-build this image from the ground up at this point, as my image is a "building block" one with lots of updates/modificiations. (Over 20 pages worth).
 
I have found a few threads in the ITRC forums but not those two.

But you're right, they're having the same problems I am!

It's true, when asking for the intel matrix driver it never even looks at the USB floppy drive even though it just did for the SATA (F6) driver!

And the other options talking about using an RIS Server is not a direction I wish to head with my images. (Not that I think you're saying that :) ) I feel like that would be taking a step backward in the imaging process. But the thing to me is, if it worked with RIS and txtsetup.oem/txtsetup.sif than it should work with sysprep... I'm just not quite that smart enough to get it.

The closest I can get is to add a line under [SysprepMassStorage]:
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2652&CC_0106 = "C:\Drivers\SATA\iaahci.inf"
And obviously point to wherever you have the inf file (I just use c:\sysprep\SATA\) and other locations like that.
 
I figured I'd give HP Support a call. So I asked the 1st level tech if he knows what sysprep is. He didn't, but he's going to find me someone that does. I think somehow this call is going to come back to the states or require an escalated ticket and a phone call back.

Last time I tried this for drivers with SoundMAX and sysprep I did the same thing and never got a call back... is that why you got downsized Dr. djnes? HEHEHE
 
Sadly, our external customer support was one thing we did well. All of the internal IT support people, like myself are gone. You better hope the call doesn't get transfered state-side, or else you'll hear nothing but crickets on the phone.
 
HAHA Well I think I'm in Canada now!!! (on the phone)

1800-hp-invent told me to call 1-888-886-3292 and pick option 1 (which is the repair facility by the way).

So I did that and she sounded amazed they told me to do that, had me on hold for 15 mins and occasionally asked me a few questioned that DIRECTLY and at the same time, confereneced me in with "Tim" from Microsoft Support Services at HP.

Tim and I talked about the issues I'm having and he is going to try and connect me to the folks that directly deal with the NC6320 laptop since they would be the ones that directly handle the OS for this laptop. He has knowledge of sysprep but he sounds like the rookie because he was amazed I have one image tha works on at least 14 of our different model PC's (and laptops, HP Gateway and Dell!)

I'm going to just continue this entire adventure as a log of sorts and let others comment along the way. Why not, I'm this deep already!

---Update---

Then Tim confereneced me with Bianca from the NC series laptop team and she said "OK let me look up the SATA issue
this the nc6320 laptop. And tim said just help him get XPSP2 installed with the proper driver and I'll handle any
sysprep issue... AND THE LINE WENT DEAD!!!! GONE>>> HUNG UP! He knew my phone number but I never got his because
anytime you start asking things like that they never want to help you again!!!
I do have a case number so I was going to call them back with it but Bianca actually called me back! WHOOHOO!
 
You'd know it was Canada, because they'd answer like this:

"HP Customer Help Line, got a problem with your computer, eh?"

And then, they'd call you a hoser at least once before hanging up.
 
WELL "Bianca" doesn't sound any more knowledgeable on the device she supports much more than I am. She has explained to me that disabling the Sata Native Mode then install XP then enable that mode again should work.

I explained to her that if I do that it will blue screen on me like it did before.

So she recorded a bunch of information and read it all back to me. I have explained how the Floppy doesn't work to read the intel maxtrix storage driver and that the HP forums also talk about this.

She is telling me that she is going to handle this case directly.
I don't think she's grasped the fact I got the thing imaged with my XP image and how that comes into play.

I have an appt to go to so I'm transfering her to my cell while she "investigates the issue" I told her I am leaving my desk but I'll transfer her to my cell phone while I go home HAHAHA what a nut.
 
Alright, I'm finally getting back to updating this one.

I FOUND THE WAY IT WILL WORK!!!

I wish I could claim it was all me but it wasn't. I received this from our HP rep.


How To Guide
PSG Pre-Sales Technical Consulting
Dan, Daniel & Jesus

How to transition an image from IDE to SATA *

Problem: After loading a syspreped image on a system with SATA set to AHCI in the F10 BIOS setup (Note that on some notebooks this mode could be called Native mode), the system will blue screen then reboot. It will do this in an infinite loop. The BSOD flashes very fast on the screen making it difficult to read the error

Reason: This is because the image does not have a valid disk driver for the SATA controller. XP starts booting, but when it switches to real mode, it can not access the disk anymore and crashes.

* What systems is this applicable to?:
• xw4300
• nc63xx, nc64xx, nc84xx, nw84xx, nx9420
• tc44xx


Solution: On the system where the original image was created do this:

1) Download the SATA drivers for the nc8430, softpaq SP32478.exe, from hp’s web site, and extract the file F6flpy32.exe to a temp directory.

2) Now you need to extract all the files from the F6flpy32.exe. To do this you can:
a. Run sp32478, this will create a floppy disk; then you can get the files from the created floppy.
b. Or extract the files from c:\swsetup\sp32478\F6flpy32.exe (created in step 2 above) using winimage (www.winimage.com)

3) Now you should have these files:
a. iaahci.cat
b. iaahci.inf
c. iastor.cat
d. iastor.inf
e. iastor.sys
f. license.txt
g. readme.txt
h. txtsetup.oem

4) Add the first 5 files (a to e from above) to your pnp drivers store, for instance c:\drivers\sata

5) Add the following section to your c:\sysprep\sysprep.inf file:

[SysprepMassStorage]
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_27C1&CC_0106 = %systemdrive%\drivers\sata\iaahci.inf ; Intel(R) 82801GR/GH SATA AHCI Controller (Desktop ICH7R/DH)

PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_27C5&CC_0106 = %systemdrive%\drivers\sata\iaahci.inf ; Intel(R) 82801GBM SATA AHCI Controller (Mobile ICH7M)

PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2652&CC_0106 = %systemdrive%\drivers\sata\iaahci.inf ; Intel(R) 82801FR SATA AHCI Controller (Desktop ICH6R)

PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2653&CC_0106 = %systemdrive%\drivers\sata\iaahci.inf ; Intel(R) 82801FBM SATA AHCI Controller (Mobile ICH6M)

PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_27C3&CC_0104 = %systemdrive%\drivers\sata\iastor.inf ; Intel(R) 82801GR/GH SATA RAID Controller (Desktop ICH7R/DH)

PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_24DF&CC_0104 = %systemdrive%\drivers\sata\iastor.inf ; Intel(R) 82801ER SATA RAID Controller (Desktop ICH5R)

PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_25B0&CC_0104 = %systemdrive%\drivers\sata\iastor.inf ; Intel(R) 6300ESB SATA RAID Controller

PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2652&CC_0104 = %systemdrive%\drivers\sata\iastor.inf ; Intel(R) 82801FR SATA RAID Controller (Desktop ICH6R)

Warning: Each line starts with PCI\, the following line is just the continuation of the first one.

6) Then add or edit the following section of sysprep.inf

[Unattended]
OemSkipEula=Yes
OemPnPDriversPath=drivers\sata;<your driver list will come here>
ConfirmHardware=No
OverwriteOemFilesOnupgrade=No
DriverSigningPolicy = Ignore
oempreinstall=yes
updateInstalledDrivers=Yes

I've modified this last part and sent it back to them.
7) Now you can run sysprep on your system. Some users report that sysprep, when run consecutively on the same image will be fast then slow, then fast, etc. This is due to it building the MassStorage devices. Make sure this is one of the slower times that builds this database. If it doesn’t work the first time, then re-run sysprep to see if it works the second time. Take an image and deploy the image to systems using SATA hardware set to AHCI or Native mode.
 
It's a shame you had to get Jesus involved, but who knew he was an IT whiz as well??
 
WAFFLES!!!
:D
I was cracking up over here man...

I had to "sig" that, I kept re-reading it and laughing!
 
i tried the steps listed by HP and i still can not get it to boot with native mode on. any other help is appreciated
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top