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Can't install XP on new SATA drive..

Kalmah

Kalmah

Diamond Member
I've never installed a SATA drive before. I thought I knew what I was doing. heh

My motherboard has an onboard SATA controller.

First I booted up the system into the BIOS and enabled the SATA controller then shut down. Disconnected the old crappy drive from IDE and connected the SATA drive up. (99.9999% sure there are no isues here)

I booted up.. saw some messages about 1 storage device being detected.. then got a message saying that I need to insert a media or reboot.

I put in the cd that came with the drive and rebooted.. the cd loaded up. while it was loading it said it didn't get any response from any of the SATA ports. Then in the software I chose to setup the drive for windows xp. it formatted ntfs. Then rebooted with the windows xp cd in.

It says to push a button to boot from cd.... I push a button. Then it says "Detecting hardware configuration".. but instead of starting the installation of windows it just reboots. Then I'm back on the "Press a key to load from cd" screen. It just circles around endlessly like that.

Any help is appreciated.

 
Originally posted by: Kalmah
asus p4s800d-x
Click to expand...
k, you may be stuck. Your onboard SATA controller is officially a RAID-only controller (RAID 0 or 1). But try this:

1) get your Asus motherboard CD-ROM disc and run it on a working PC. Its AutoPlay menu should include "Make SIS RAID driver disk." Run that. It makes a driver floppy (get a floppy drive hooked up if you don't have one) that you can use during Windows Setup.

2) Launch Windows Setup from the WinXP CD. Watch the first couple of blue screens where it'll say "Press F6 if you gots one-a them driver floppies" and you press F6 there. When the time comes, give it your driver floppy.

3) If/when it sees your HDD, delete all the partitions and press the F3 key twice to exit from Windows Setup this first time around.

4) now start Windows Setup again, doing the F6-key thing, giving it the floppy, make a partition, quick-format it NTFS as usual, and let it reboot.

5) on the reboot, do NOT press a key to boot from CD-ROM this time, you want it to boot from the HDD from here on out. If it insists on booting from CD, check your motherboard's boot-device priority list to get the RAID controller on top of the stack.

Good luck 🙂 but maybe consider getting a PATA drive or a used P4C-series motherboard that won't put you through this stuff.
 
That sucks royally. The mobo manual didn't make it very clear that it was raid-only.

The problem is though, I can't even get the windows xp setup to load. It just reboots the system during the 'checking current hardware configuration' part.


grr.. and I may have accidentally formatted my backup ide hd that has/had 5+ years worth of files. I remember formatting something.. thinking I disconnected that drive.. but now that I think back I might have disconnected it after I did that.

Something like this ALWAYS happens. :evil:

I appreciate your help. Thanks.
 
Originally posted by: Kalmah
That sucks royally. The mobo manual didn't make it very clear that it was raid-only.

The problem is though, I can't even get the windows xp setup to load. It just reboots the system during the 'checking current hardware configuration' part.


grr.. and I may have accidentally formatted my backup ide hd that has/had 5+ years worth of files. I remember formatting something.. thinking I disconnected that drive.. but now that I think back I might have disconnected it after I did that.
Click to expand...
Aieee! :Q Ok, here's some file-recovery resources listed by John: http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=32&threadid=2032881&enterthread=y
 
hah! It looks like there is something wrong with something else. Even with the new SATA drive disconnected and the old IDE drive connected xp installation still won't start and insists on rebooting.

So now I have both drives connected.. since I can't re-install windows from the cd for some strange reason I'm doing an exact copy of the old ide drive(with windows installed)to the sata drive.

This looks like it's going to take a while. Hopefully it works and I'll be able to retire the old drive for good.

By the way, I lucked out, I didn't accidentally erase my backup drive.

 
Originally posted by: Kalmah
hah! It looks like there is something wrong with something else. Even with the new SATA drive disconnected and the old IDE drive connected xp installation still won't start and insists on rebooting.

So now I have both drives connected.. since I can't re-install windows from the cd for some strange reason I'm doing an exact copy of the old ide drive(with windows installed)to the sata drive.

This looks like it's going to take a while. Hopefully it works and I'll be able to retire the old drive for good.

By the way, I lucked out, I didn't accidentally erase my backup drive.
Click to expand...
Good to hear your backup is OK. From what you said, it almost sounds like your motherboard is creating a RAID1 (mirrored) array using your new drive to mirror your old one.

Ramifications (if that's what it's doing): when you remove the old drive, the RAID controller will regard your SATA drive as a "broken" RAID1 array. Also, your array will be the same capacity as the smaller of the two drives, which is not exactly great if you needed the storage space.

 
It sounds like you're pretty new to all of this so let me give you a little tip. When installing windows do not hook up any hd other than the install to drive if you have a mix of sata and ide drives. Reason is that if you are installing windows to the sata the installer will place system files on the ide hd and if you ever remove it from the system you will not be able to boot. You should also make sure that you have the drivers for the new mb on a floppy so that you can hit f6 as was already mentioned and let the windows installer incorporate those drivers into the setup. On some controllers you have to give it both the raid and non raid drivers hitting f6 then telling it to add another driver until both have been added before continuing the installation. Doing an exact copy will not work unless you removed the proprietary drivers from the install before you shut down. You will get a machine stop bsod when you try to boot up on the new mb.
 
Ok..

Lets say that no matter what drive is hooked up, when it boots up with the xp cd in it goes to the screen saying "inspecting your current hardware configuration..." then it reboots. Even with my old drive that sill has a bootable os on it. I can't even get the xp setup to start.

The SATA drive appears to work correctly. With my old drive plugged in and the new sata drive I booted into windows. I can transfer files onto and off of the new drive with no problems.

I think my problem is that the windows xp installation wont freakin start. I've never had this happen before. Always just been I put in the cd and the installation loads when I boot the computer up.

 
Try starting WinXP Setup with no hard drives hooked up at all. Does that work?


Big picture: if your time is worth something, remember there's PATA drives starting in the low-$40 area at Newegg... 😀
 
With no drives in at all, the computer boots.. I get to the "press a key to boot from cd" screen.. I press a key.. it says "Inspecting current hardware configuration" then the computer reboots.

I don't think it's a problem with any of the drives. Since it does it even when they are not connected.

Is there a way to install windows onto a second HD from within windows? I tried with the cd and it says I have a newer version of windows installed bla bla bla.. please reboot with cd in drive...

I appreciate it.
 
Make a slip streamed Xp SP2 disk. If you are using an original XP disk than odds are your problem is the lack of built in SATA support with the original version.
 
Thanks for everyones help.

It was something really stupid. A small scratch on the xp installation cd was making it unreadable. Luckily I was able to borrow a cd from a friend to install and use my own cd key of course.

I made a driver floppy for the sata.. and hit f6 to install them during xp installation. Everything went smooth. I almost have everything back up and running.

Thanks again.
 
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