Gigabyte GA-8KNF-9

[carycary]

I have been trying to install XP pro on my first computer build. The CD drives work and I enter the blue partition screen and XP asks which partition that I wish to instal XP on. It does it thing and I end up at the first screen, Which partition do I wish to install XP on. After a couple of trips on this loop I figured that something wasn't right. My BIOS seems not to see the SATA hard drive, but the RAID utilty does. I don't think that I need raid since I only have the one drive. After some research, it seems that I have to push the F6 button to install the SATA drivers manually with a floppy. Nothing on the Gigabyte support page seems close. I have emailed Gigabyte but I have not received a response.

does anyone know where I can get these elusive SATA drivers to download onto floppy? I looked at the MB CD but that wasn't much of a help.

Thanks!

 

[nick128]

Ok, a) you don't need drivers for the SATA on that board, it's part of the chipset, WIndows sees it now just like it does your PATA drives. B) i just did an install with this board, there is a setting under the bios to disable RAID On the drives. Page 36 and 37 of your mobo manual explain these options. Basically under the Integrated Peripherals sections of your BIOS there is an option called "IDE/SATA RAID Function" It defaults to Enabled for some reason, but since you're not running a RAID array you can just disable this option and you shoudl be set.

For future reference, whenever you build a system, before you even get out your XP CD, go in and tinker with the BIOS, look at every menu, and every option, just to give you an idea of what is there, and you can spot problems like this before WIndows starts giving you errors. Learn to love your BIOS.

EDIT: you dont' get an SATA detection screen on these boards like you did the older ones that idnd't have integrated SATA. (just because it's onboard doesn't mean it's integrated.) You should see the drive come up during the same rigamaroll where you see your CD drive show up. If not, cehck your connections.

 

[carycary]

Nick,

I wasn't sure if I should take the advise of a "Junior" member but....YOU THE MAN!
Just joking about about the junior member stuff. After reading those pages again it made perfect sense. Xp popped up upon reboot and I'm good to go until my next problem. I wish that I would have written this forum two days ago!

Once again, Thanks!

Cary

 

[nick128]

Originally posted by: carycary
Nick,

I wasn't sure if I should take the advise of a "Junior" member but....YOU THE MAN!
Just joking about about the junior member stuff. After reading those pages again it made perfect sense. Xp popped up upon reboot and I'm good to go until my next problem. I wish that I would have written this forum two days ago!

Once again, Thanks!

Cary

Yeah, it was dumb of Gigabyte to default the RAID to enabled, since it's a budget nForce4 board and most who use it won't spring for RAID anyway. Like i said, i just built one with that board and a Gigabyte 6600 (Non-GT), with 512MB mushkin and a 3000+ A64 and it was pretty smoking for a system that barely broke $1000 (w/a 17" Samsung 12ms LCD). The guy i built it for is already planning on dropping another 512 of memory in it to bump performance a little more.

Good luck with your stuff in the future. Hopefully there'll always be guys like me around to help out 'cause more often than not i need guys smarter than me to help my blind ass find a setting or jumper or trick to make something work we all do, regardless of what we say

 

[carycary]

Amen to that Brother!