Loading windows drivers on bootup

[FireDemon]

Well, long story short, a guy I work with fubared his windows installation.

He had 50GB worth of files he did not want to loose so I hooked his hard drive up to my PC and proceeded to back up his files.

I took his XP Home CD and reinstalled windows onto his hard drive following a full format.

I did of course, have to use the press F6 method during the install to load my SATA drivers so it could detect my hard drive. The install went fine, so I copied all of his files back over.

I attempted to install the SATA drivers for his motherboard, which is an Abit KV8 Pro, but of course the installer did want to go through with it because I didn't have the matching hardware.

So the next best guess I took was to just throw the driver files (.sys, .inf, and catalog) themselves into C:/WINDOWS/system32/drivers.

Well, that method obviously did NOT work because as soon as he plugs it into his computer and tries to boot, windows gets to the loading screen, bluescreens, then the PC restarts. A clear sign that windows is not using the proper drivers to communicate with his SATA ports.

So, is there a way to load these drivers from a floppy or something of that sort from the windows boot menu or a command prompt, or does he have to format it on his PC and load the drivers during setup?

Thanks in advance.

 

[alphanumeric]

I'd format and start over, loading the correct drivers.

 

[upriverpaddler]

Can't you just leave the SATA drivers out during the install. You dont need your HDD installed during the Windows install. Plug it in after its all said and done.

 

[FireDemon]

Uhhhh, unless theres some magical method I haven't heard about that involves permanately installing the OS to RAM , then yes you need a hard drive installed while putting in windows.

 

[Met-AL]

In the BIOS, there may be an option for running the SATA controller to look like an IDE controller so you don't need to do the F6 during the install of Windows. In my BIOS, it's called SATA mode and the options are RAID/IDE. In IDE mode, Windows doesn't need it for installing.

 

[TheRapture]

Can't you just leave the SATA drivers out during the install. You dont need your HDD installed during the Windows install. Plug it in after its all said and done.

Uhhhhh.....whoa, what have you been smoking? (can i have some).

Yes, as the one above said, you need a HDD to write the OS to.......

 

[svet-am]

In the BIOS, there may be an option for running the SATA controller to look like an IDE controller so you don't need to do the F6 during the install of Windows. In my BIOS, it's called SATA mode and the options are RAID/IDE. In IDE mode, Windows doesn't need it for installing.

as a KV8 Pro owner, I can attest that switching between RAID/IDE mode (at least on this mobo) does NOT do what you suggest.

In RAID mode it sets up the onboard controller as a RAID host (duh!) but in IDE mode it simply means tells the OS that the SATA devices connected to it are not part of a RAID array. A better menu selection would be RAID/NON-RAID, but I digress.

If one attempts to install windows on this mobo without the proper SATA drivers, Windows will simply b0rk and not see the hard disks.

 

[Met-AL]

as a KV8 Pro owner, I can attest that switching between RAID/IDE mode (at least on this mobo) does NOT do what you suggest.

In RAID mode it sets up the onboard controller as a RAID host (duh!) but in IDE mode it simply means tells the OS that the SATA devices connected to it are not part of a RAID array. A better menu selection would be RAID/NON-RAID, but I digress.

If one attempts to install windows on this mobo without the proper SATA drivers, Windows will simply b0rk and not see the hard disks.

It does on my board with an AMI BIOS. It could be a limitation of your VIA chipset. But I know my ULi chipset and I have read nVidia chipsets can both install WinXP without SATA or RAID drivers onto a SATA drive.

 

[FireDemon]

Hmmm. It almost sounds like your Uli has an option to emulate the SATA as an IDE, if not pass it through the IDE controller altogether.

Either that or windows already had the correct drivers out of the box, which i doubt anyway,

*sigh* I was hoping that since I threw the files into his windows folder, windows would AUTOMATICALLY pick up on them when he tried booting from his PC.

Looks like hes on his own for a fresh format this time.

I swear, windows was always the biggest POS when it came to recovery options. Something as simple as this, and no solution? WTF!

 

[upriverpaddler]

Uhhhhh.....whoa, what have you been smoking? (can i have some).

Yes, as the one above said, you need a HDD to write the OS to.......

What I meant was your SATA with the backup data. I was assuming his OS HDD wasn't SATA. My bad.

 

[TheRapture]

What I meant was your SATA with the backup data. I was assuming his OS HDD wasn't SATA. My bad.

We figured it was an error of ommision, just giving you a hard time

 

[djnes]

Hmmm. It almost sounds like your Uli has an option to emulate the SATA as an IDE, if not pass it through the IDE controller altogether.

Either that or windows already had the correct drivers out of the box, which i doubt anyway,

*sigh* I was hoping that since I threw the files into his windows folder, windows would AUTOMATICALLY pick up on them when he tried booting from his PC.

Looks like hes on his own for a fresh format this time.

I swear, windows was always the biggest POS when it came to recovery options. Something as simple as this, and no solution? WTF!

First off, most chipsets now, especially all Intel chipsets have never needed special drivers loaded, unless you were using RAID functionality. It sounds like you've had the misfortune of using some poorly supported chipsets, or else you wouldn't be surprised that someone didn't need to load drives. Second, why are you blaming Microsoft, instead of using better options to recover his data? BartPE, ERD Commander, Ghost Explorer, all offer much better ways of accessing the drive. I'd tell the guy tot ake his drive back home. Go over there with a BartPE CD and an external USB drive. Pull his data off, then re-install XP for him. Problem solved, no drive swapping needed.

Why is everyone jumping on upriverpaddler? The OP was very drawn out and confusing. It wasn't clear what was going on with the hard drives.

 

[Met-AL]

Why is everyone jumping on upriverpaddler? The OP was very drawn out and confusing. It wasn't clear what was going on with the hard drives.

Mr Deputy Sherriff/MS Champion of the forums, I think they were teasing him in jest to obviously funny off the wall type of reply to the OP's post.

And yes, not all chipsets support emulating RAID controllers as IDE so Windows will install without the whole F6 thing. This is especially common for add-on SATA controllers such as the ones from Silicon Image or AMI and others. Also, not everyone knows that there is a BIOS setting to get your SATA controller to emulate a IDE controller, hell mine is not clearly labled in an understanding term and the only reason I discovered it was because I didn't want the RAID configuration screen to pop up everytime I rebooted and what would ya know, the next time I reinstalled Windows I didn't need to F6 drivers.