Sata drivers for XP

E

ep3w

Gawd
Joined
Apr 4, 2008
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My parts for my first build will be here Friday and I want to clarify something before I run into trouble later. I have a gigabyte ep35-ds3l motherboard and I will be using a WD 640GB sataII drive. I plan on installing XP and if I am correct, I will need sata drivers in order to install XP with AHCI enabled. My question is which sata drivers do I need? Gigabytes website doesn't seem to have any specific sata drivers. Does XP have the ability to look for USB flash drives for the sata drivers or do I need to borrow a floppy from an old PC? Thanks for the help!
 
XP can't use anything but a floppy drive to load the F6 drivers as required, sorry. You either do it that way, or you integrate the drivers manually into a new installation CD, which is actually the preferred method as floppies can be pretty damned unreliable. Also, making a "new" properly integrated XP SP3 CD now that Service Pack 3 is out is the way to go, and then integrate the SATA drivers also.

I am not 100% sure if the AHCI controller on that mobo supports that mode of operation under XP, and here's why: I have the Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L, almost the same board in some respects, using the same chipset and the same North Bridge also, and AHCI doesn't work during the installation because Intel doesn't support it unless it's an ICH9R chipset.

There are reports where people use the native SATA IDE mode (sounds weird but it's there) to get XP installed, then after XP is up and running they'll install the proper AHCI driver and .inf file and after a reboot it works, but I've attempted to install XP Pro SP3, XP x64 SP2, and even Win2K3 (32 bit and 64 bit) using AHCI mode in the BIOS and the damned thing just doesn't work, with the driver integrated or on a floppy. Not sure what exactly the problem is, but right now I'm using Win2K3 x64 in SATA IDE native mode since I cannot get AHCI mode working at all.

I've made repeated attempts to enable AHCI support and get it working under the older OSes, and it just doesn't do it. It does work under Vista and 2K8, however, as strange as the case may be, and not sure exactly why it works there but not under the older OSes even using the exact same drivers from Intel.

Bleh.
 
I was able to install XP without the F6 Drivers on my laptop however I had to turn off a sata feature in the bios. Sata Native Support.
 
If you set your SATA ports to run in "IDE mode", you shouldn't have any issues, considering that is an Intel chipset board.
 
After looking into it more I seem to have come up with exactly what Joe Average said. It looks like Intel doesnt support ICH9 chip for XP installs. In order to install you need to run in IDE native mode, which should install with no problem like others have said. Typically switching back to AHCI after install will Blue Screen you, but it looks like some people have found ways around this like you said. Vista supports AHCI natively. Looks like I will just be installing in Sata Native support, unless I dig up something better. I use an esata external so I am hoping I can enable it later to be able to hotswap. Thanks for the suggestions!
 
You could always use an ide drive for XP and the SATA drive for your files. Hopefully Windows 7 will help use all move from XP.. but until that happens.. My choice is obvious :D
 
I have two computers with SATA HDDs that took an XP install without problems.
I used a normal retail XP Home with SP2, no problems.

One board was an nvidia 650i, the other an nvidia 680i.
 
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