Trouble with New SATA Install

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Tetragrammaton

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Jan 6, 2008
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After my Raptor 740 died on me, I went and bought a 500GB SATA Seagate drive, but I haven't been able to get a fresh Windows XP installation to work over the past month.

The drive seems to be recognized by the Windows installer just fine. I can format it, copy files, and then reboot. But upon rebooting, the system boots back to the CD (regardless of boot order!) and starts installation all over again!

The BIOS doesn't seem to recognize that there's anything there, but that could be that it's just looking for IDE stuff... I've tried messing with a lot of BIOS settings, but nothing seems to change the system's behavior.

After learning about how some systems need SATA drivers installed first (though I don't think I ever had to do this during previous installations), I followed the instructions that came with my Gigabyte mobo, made a driver floppy, and tried to use that through an F6 install. Unfortunately, Windows didn't even recognize that there was anything in the floppy drive. It prompted me to insert the disk, press Enter... and then looped back to the prompt, accomplishing nothing. Lack of SATA drivers could be the problem, but I'm not sure how to get Windows to read the floppy (and besides, I thought the BIOS would at least know that there was an HDD present!).

Hoping that this was just a mechanical problem, I RMAed the drive. The replacement arrived today and I'm getting the exact same results. I've checked and rechecked my cables. Help me, [H], you're my only hope!
 
I once had a problem getting floppy detected because whenever I crewed it in securely into my Lian LI the drive stopped working right. After 2 days I learned if I left the screws loose the floppy worked (and I had same issue with 2 floppy drive in same Lian Li Case).

Did you try installing without the F6 drivers? If your a single user you wont get much useful from F6 drivers. I never use them anymore.
 
Couple things... what mobo are you using? Also, how do you have your SATA configured in your BIOS?

As I remember, XP doesn't natively play nicely with AHCI (well, without drivers, anyway).

As a quick recommendation, ensure your SATA is configured in 'compatibility' mode, if you can make such a setting. If you can, you'll likely be given a couple other choices... to set as IDE or SATA (maybe a third choice, too?). I'd start with 'IDE' and work from there... and then we'll try to get the boot order thing figured out.
 
abcdelight said:
I once had a problem getting floppy detected because whenever I crewed it in securely into my Lian LI the drive stopped working right. After 2 days I learned if I left the screws loose the floppy worked (and I had same issue with 2 floppy drive in same Lian Li Case).

Did you try installing without the F6 drivers? If your a single user you wont get much useful from F6 drivers. I never use them anymore.
Click to expand...

*LOL* reminds me of the time I had 90 Gateway E-2600D towers at work which came in with Mitsumi drives from Malaysia that wouldn't work when secured inside the chassis...... they worked fine outside of the chassis............ they worked fine in Gateway E-4500D towers which used the same chassis but different mobo............... and most bizarre of all, identical Mitsumi drives made in the Phillipines worked fine in the E-2600D's and so did every other brand floppy drive I tried......... The only thing the Gateway engineers and I could come up with was that there was some sort of manufacturing variation between the Malaysian and Philipino drives, and something on the 2600's mobo was causing some sort of crosstalk issue............ So their fix was to ship me 90 Panasonic drives, and 5 onsite technicians to swap them out for me...............
 
I did indeed try installing without F6 drivers. That's what I started with, since I don't recall ever having to use them before (though that might be because I never installed XP on SATA before... can't recall).

My mobo is a Gigabyte K8NXP-SLI. It's got a bunch of settings for RAID that I've never used, and I'm hoping that I can safely continue to ignore them.

I'll describe everything that I've got going on with HDDs in the BIOS:

Under "Standard CMOS Features" I've got
IDE Channel 0 Master --- [None]
IDE Channel 0 Slave --- [None]
IDE Channel 1 Master --- [SONY DVD RW DW-Q2]
IDE Channel 1 Slave --- [None]

Upon selecting any of the [None]s, I have a field listed
IDE HDD Auto-Detection --- [Press Enter]
But pressing enter gives me a delay while it tries to detect a hard drive and returns to no avail. I've tried auto-detection on each slot with no success.

Under "Advanced BIOS Features" I can set the first, second, and thrid boot devices. I also have the option Hard Disk Boot Priority. Upon selecting this I get a single-item list that reads:
1. Bootable Add-in Cards
I'm pretty sure that if there are any HDDs detected, the should show up here.

Under "Integrated Peripherals" I've got a huge list of stuff to Enable and Disable.
Here's all the contents that mention IDE or SATA:
[Enabled] --- On-Chip IDE Channel 0
[Enabled] --- On-Chip IDE Channel 1
[Enabled] --- IDE/SATA RAID function
[Disabled] --- IDE Primary Master RAID
[Disabled] --- IDE Primary Slave RAID
[Disabled] --- IDE Secondary Master RAID
[Disabled] --- IDE Secondary Slave RAID
[Enabled] --- Serial-ATA 1
[Enabled] --- SATA 1 Primary RAID
[Enabled] --- Sata 1 Secondary RAID
[Enabled] --- Serial-ATA 2
[Enabled] --- SATA 2 Primary RAID
[Enabled] --- SATA 2 Secondary RAID
[Enabled] --- SATA RAID-5 Function

Let me know how/if I ought to fiddle with this and I'll get back to you with the results.
 
I've had similar trouble as you with one of my mobo's.
Windoze XP would see the drive and start to install but the drive never showed up as a boot drive.
The trouble was caused by the bios seeing the Secondary IDE channel and the Primary SATA channel as only one channel.
So with two devices hooked up, only one booted.
Try moving either the DVD drive or the Hard drive to a different channel and see if both show up as boot devices.
If they do then problem is fixed.

Luck ............. :D
 
If you are not using raid, change the sata1 and sata2 entries to something other than raid, none, or disabled. Should be options like pata, eide, sata or auto as options. Try one of those.
 
Progress!

After disabling IDE/SATA RAID Function, the BIOS now recognizes the HDD and Windows actually tries to start setup! Unfortunately, that doesn't mean that it's working.

I get a new error message, "Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem. Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check booth path and disk hardware."

In the BIOS's Standard CMOS Features, I've now got IDE Channels 2, 3, and 5 showing up. The HDD is listed in IDE Channel 2, with no options for moving it to another channel in the BIOS. Channel 0 is still empty.

Any ideas on how to proceed? How does one move a drive to a different channel?
 
GORANKAR said:
If you are not using raid, change the sata1 and sata2 entries to something other than raid, none, or disabled. Should be options like pata, eide, sata or auto as options. Try one of those.
Click to expand...

Nah, the only options are Enabled and Disabled. If I disable SATA, the HDD doesn't get recognized.
 
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