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Help installing XP Pro to SATA drive

K

k-space

Weaksauce
Joined
Feb 9, 2001
Messages
68
I have a new SATA HD that I am trying to install with Win XP Pro. When I built my system I intentionally left out a floppy drive. Its outdated tech and I hate those damn things. I've had Win2K on the system for a year and had no problem installing that to the old IDE drive I was using. The problem now is that it appears I can't install XP Pro to my SATA drive without a floppy. I have a bootable CD with all the old Win98 tools on it (fdisk) but, of course, fdisk won't work because it doesn't recongnize the SATA drive as a fixed disk. Similarlly if I use the bootable CD to load CD ROM drivers and then run winnt.exe from my XP disk the install immeadiately fails because it says it needs a drive to install to (I never get to the F6 option of providing HD drivers during XP setup). The only solution I've been able to find is to install XP from floppy and, when prompted, hit F6 and provide the proper drivers. Does anyone know of a way to install XP Pro to a SATA HD without using a floppy?

Thanks for any help you can give,

Dane R. Vinson
 
At the very beginning of the install ,at the bottom of the screen you need to look for a message that says "Do you want to install 3rd party scsi drivers?" or something similar to that. You must say yes. Because the SATA drive is not on the IDE channel Windows sees it as SCSI, even though it is not really SCSI. After that ,as long as your SATA drive is formatted properly, you should be able to install.
 
hate to tell you this buta you gota hook up a floppy because its the only thing windows xp will let you load the driver off of, already been all the way through this its design limit on windows xp install
 
hhookk:
What you are talking about the the little message that tells you to hit F6 if you want to install a 3rd party HD driver. The install never even gets to that point. As soon as you run winnt.exe it imeadiately tells you it can't find a hard drive and the install stops.

Rasha:
Damn. I was afraid of that. I can't believe that at this point stupid companies are still designing things that REQUIRE floppy drives. They are completely useless for everything except stuff like this which companies have never bothered to update. Thanks for the info. I'll have to steal a floppy from somewhere.
 
*shrugs*

Mine worked with no problem on my D865GRH motherboard, no drivers, nothing, straight to partitioning and formatting using XP setup.
 
Originally posted by malingjc
*shrugs*

Mine worked with no problem on my D865GRH motherboard, no drivers, nothing, straight to partitioning and formatting using XP setup.
Click to expand...

I noticed that with my 875 board. Motherboard with NATIVE SATA in the southbridge trick the os into thinking its an pata drive.
 
Both of your MB chipsets are later than mind (845PE). Its good to know they fixed this limitation on subsequent hardware.
 
Originally posted by k-space
hhookk:
What you are talking about the the little message that tells you to hit F6 if you want to install a 3rd party HD driver. The install never even gets to that point. As soon as you run winnt.exe it imeadiately tells you it can't find a hard drive and the install stops.

Rasha:
Damn. I was afraid of that. I can't believe that at this point stupid companies are still designing things that REQUIRE floppy drives. They are completely useless for everything except stuff like this which companies have never bothered to update. Thanks for the info. I'll have to steal a floppy from somewhere.
Click to expand...

Try putting a hard drive on the ide channel just so the install sees it then you can get to the point to hit f6 for the sata drivers.
 
Well this is becoming very aggravating. I grabbed a floppy from another computer and got through the install of the third party drivers for the HD. The system found the proper XP drivers on the floppy. Now I make it to the install screen where it shows your available drives and my drive shows up as a 0 MB drive. If I try to install anyway I get a GPF saying there is no swap space available, i.e. there is not HD. I would just make the assumption that I have a bad drive at this point if it were not for one fact. If I use the MB’s RAID setup feature the drive shows up as the 80 GB SATA drive that it is. Any ideas would be very welcomed. I’m about at my wits end here.

Thanks,

Dane
 
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