Installing Windows on SATA

S

SoSo09

n00b
Joined
Dec 18, 2005
Messages
19
Ok, I've got an Alienware laptop that would get to the Windows boot logo, flash a BSOD, and reboot. I was planning on reformatting it and putting a fresh copy of XP on it. So, I went into the SATA utility and found the harddrive there and formatted it. I made the new stripe, and tried to load Windows. It doesn't show any available harddrives to partition or install on. After this, I plugged my usb floppy up to my computer and put the SATA drivers on it. Loaded up Windows, pressed F6, and loaded the driver. Everything seemed to be going smooth, but still, no available harddrives. Any ideas?
 
most times the floppy drive will have more than one driver. make sure to get the right ones. OR try a new one from Alienwares website.
 
After Windows read the floppy, I had 4 to choose from. 3 were for desktops and 1 was for mobile, I chose mobile since it's a laptop.
 
*UPDATE*

Whoa, I didn't see this coming. I took the harddrive out of the laptop hoping to put it into my computer and try it from there, but I realized that it's not an SATA drive, its PATA! Um, thats weird, because my SATA software would see the drive and be able to set it up as a striped drive.

Now I'm confused... I shouldn't need SATA drivers to see my harddrive in PATA right? Well, I know that my BIOS sees the harddrive, but Windows doesn't. Maybe I have a BIOS setting wrong? Also, I've tried two different copies of Windows XP, one has no SP and the other has SP2 slipstreamed.

Any ideas?
 
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