Win2000 Installer Can't Detect SATA Drive

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Catalan

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 24, 2004
Messages
317
I've just finished building a new Athlon 64 system, and I can't get Windows 2000 to install.

The motherboard is an Abit KV8 Pro, which came with SATA drivers on a floppy. The hard drive is an OEM Western Digital SATA (WD1600JD). The BIOS detects the drive just fine, and I've formatted it with WD's Data Lifeguard, so I'm sure it's correctly hooked up, but the Windows 2000 installer can't find it. Abit's included drivers don't work, the updated drivers on Abit's site don't work, and the SATA drivers on Western Digital's site don't work.

I've already updated the BIOS, and I don't have any other SATA capable systems to further test the drive.

I'm not sure what else I can try.
Does anyone have any ideas?
 
you..booted from the cd .. hit f6 to add the sata drivers from the floppy during install and then win 2000 still cant find the disk?
 
Sounds like you need to read the mobo manual on how to correctly enable the SATA ports for the configuration you want. All of my Abit manuals have a chart to show you how it would be configured for each option. You don't need to hit F6 and load any special drivers, unless your using the RAID functionality. Well, at least not with any of the Intel chipset boards I have. 2000/XP see the drive as an IDE drive, unless I enable RAID.
 
could be true with intel, but I've built both an athlon64 system with msi and gigabyte and always had to load the drivers.. I wish it was native
 
hulksterjoe said:
you..booted from the cd .. hit f6 to add the sata drivers from the floppy during install and then win 2000 still cant find the disk?
Click to expand...

Exactly.

djnes said:
Sounds like you need to read the mobo manual on how to correctly enable the SATA ports for the configuration you want. All of my Abit manuals have a chart to show you how it would be configured for each option. You don't need to hit F6 and load any special drivers, unless your using the RAID functionality. Well, at least not with any of the Intel chipset boards I have. 2000/XP see the drive as an IDE drive, unless I enable RAID.
Click to expand...

Certainly, I read the manual (several times), but I don't recall any such chart. I will take another look, of course.

I do wonder, however, why they would include SATA drivers on a seperate floppy if they didn't intend these to be used during the installation?

Anyway, I'll give your suggestion a shot. Wish me luck!
 
make sure your loading the VIA sata drivers and not the intel one from that disk
 
Catalan said:
I do wonder, however, why they would include SATA drivers on a seperate floppy if they didn't intend these to be used during the installation?
Click to expand...

For the exact reason I stated. They aren't needed unless your using a RAID array.
 
Still no luck.

I've gone through all the materials included with the motherboard, and I haven't found any SATA configuration charts.

hulksterjoe said:
make sure your loading the VIA sata drivers and not the intel one from that disk
Click to expand...

Other than the Intel SATA drivers, I've only found Silicon Image SATA drivers, actually.
 
I'm having the exact same problem although I'm confused about running RAID... any help w/ that? It wont detect the drive in the first place but then I wanted to run both my Seagate SATA's in raid... I have 2... Sorry for the highjack
 
Still no progress installing Win2000.

I thought I'd give Fedora a shot, and that installed without a hitch. No hardware problems to speak of. So... that pretty much narrows down the problem to being with the SATA drivers and/or Windows 2000 itself.
 
Just an update.

Tried installing XP on the system, and I ran into the same problem. None of the drivers available will seem to let Windows find the drive.
 
ive had that problem with my athlon system and mainboard...

here is what i did..

booted of disk (winxp)
pressed f6
loaded silicon and via drivers (in ur case u should of course use the win2000 ones, but at first u can just simply load all of them to be 100% sure)
and then they were recognized, another thing that i have heard, if u are using two Sata drives, unplug one of them.. might help

report back
 
I had the same problem. During the XP install, I got a message saying 'windows was does not detect a hard disk'. So I installed the SATA drivers by pressing F6 and still no go. What I did was go into BIOS and go to 'drives'. Select SATA and enable it. Reboot and see if it works.
 
Finally got everything working!

Needed the Via drivers from here. :D

Would have been nice if Abit had included them with the darned motherboard, but oh well. Hope this helps anyone else having problems.
 
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