How To Install GA-K8N9F-9 + WinXp SATA, It Is Possible!

[HighCalibreHooch]

If you can believe it, I've had this board (Nforce 4 with PCI-E) on my desk since January 3rd, and I've been waiting since then for my video card of all things.

Now that I've installed everything, I want to clear up for people exactly how I got this bad-boy up and running. Some well-meaning people have been giving advice re: SATA drives that just doesn't seem to work out with this board.

Installing WinXP On A SATA Drive

The hard drive I chose is the Seagate 7200.7 80GB SATA w/ NCQ. Beforce I was ready to install it, I read up here and eleswhere that for a single SATA installation, RAID drivers shouldn't be necessary, that the BIOS will identify the drive as an additional 'IDE Master' and inform Windows accordingly.

While that may be the usual scenario, after hours of work and anguish I figured out that for this motherboard you need to install RAID drivers. Even if you are not setting up a RAID array, Windows still needs the SATA/RAID drivers. And guess what? You need a floppy drive, too.

I tried three different slip-streamed CDs with SATA drivers, both with SP1 & SP2, and different SATA drivers from the Gibabyte CD, but to no avail. Windows would hang half-way through installation. The only way I could install Windows onto my SATA drive was doing the following:

Step By Step

1)Install your motherboard, components, and of course the hard drive. If you're unsure how to do this, read this excellent DIY guide for s939 (featuring a Gigabyte board no less) here: http://www.hardwarezone.com/guides/amd-socket939/

2)(Optional): After hours of frustration and the pounding of sand, go to your local used computer parts store and purchase a floppy drive.

3)On another computer, insert the Gigabyte CD-ROM and go to the /BootDrv folder. There you will find a dozen SATA/RAID drivers. Right-click on NVSATAXP.EXE and select an extract (WinZip / WinRAR). Extract the driver files to a folder.

4)Browse to that folder and copy all the files to a floppy disk.

5)Back to your new computer now. In the K8N9F-9 BIOS, switch off all RAID functions for the SATA ports, but leave the SATA ports themselves enabled.

6)Insert your CD-ROM and boot to the Windows Setup screen. Make sure your CD-ROM drive is set before the HDD in the BIOS boot sequence. (Refer to the guide if you're unsure how).

7)As you as the Windows setup screen appears, you will see an option on the bottom gray bar 'Hit F6 to install third-party RAID Drivers.' Hit F6.

8)In a minute Windows will ask for your RAID drivers. Press 'S' and insert the floppy.

9)You will see two Nvidia entries. You will need to install both, which means you will need to do step 9 twice, once for each driver.

10)Let Windows finish installing. Once in Windows, insert the Gibabyte CD-ROM and let it load the rest of the important drivers.

 

[bellang]

Strange. Heard this kind of scenario a few times, however with my gigabyte sli board, so same chipset, XP sp2 installed straight on, with no issues seeing the drive and not hangs/crashes. any idea why???!!!!

 

[HighCalibreHooch]

Originally posted by: bellang
Strange. Heard this kind of scenario a few times, however with my gigabyte sli board, so same chipset, XP sp2 installed straight on, with no issues seeing the drive and not hangs/crashes. any idea why???!!!!

I wish I could say. I'm not sure why slip-streaming SP2 into WindowsXP works for some people re: this problem and others not. (I used nLite for my slip-streams).

 

[shira]

Originally posted by: HighCalibreHooch

Installing WinXP On A SATA Drive

The hard drive I chose is the Seagate 7200.7 80GB SATA w/ NCQ.

I assume you mean the GA-K8NF-9 (non-Ultra) MB.


Which set of SATA ports did you end up using (the 1.5GBs or the 3.0 GBs)? Had you tried both before your final, successful installation?



Does the GA-K8NF-9 provide NCQ support? If so, have you figured out how to enable it?


Edit: Added NCQ question.

 

[HighCalibreHooch]

Originally posted by: shira

Originally posted by: HighCalibreHooch

Installing WinXP On A SATA Drive

The hard drive I chose is the Seagate 7200.7 80GB SATA w/ NCQ.

I assume you mean the GA-K8NF-9 (non-Ultra) MB.


Which set of SATA ports did you end up using (the 1.5GBs or the 3.0 GBs)? Had you tried both before your final, successful installation?



Does the GA-K8NF-9 provide NCQ support? If so, have you figured out how to enable it?


Edit: Added NCQ question.

Yep, my board is Giga-byte's non-Ultra Nforce 4 board. No SLI, and, apparently the '4X' in its title means it isn't capable of 5x HyperTransport speeds. [shrugs].

I might be wrong, but I think you can only get 3.0GB SATA on SATA II, which this board doesn't have.

I found NCQ just now in Device Manager > IDE/ATAPI Controllers > Nvidia CK804 CDMA Controller > Primary Channel > Enable Command Queing. Thanks for reminding me. :beer:

 

[bellang]

From a lot of posts i've seen, the current nforce4 drivers have some NCQ issues which eventually leads to corrupt data.

I did have it enabled, but now removed because of this. Waiting for Nvidia to publish some nforce4 drivers on their website (which they havent done yet for some odd reason....)

 

[HighCalibreHooch]

Originally posted by: bellang
From a lot of posts i've seen, the current nforce4 drivers have some NCQ issues which eventually leads to corrupt data.

I did have it enabled, but now removed because of this. Waiting for Nvidia to publish some nforce4 drivers on their website (which they havent done yet for some odd reason....)

Yikes! Thanks for the heads-up bellang. :shocked:

 

[Trente]

I was able to install Windows XP - the original one, with no integrated service pack - on my K8NF-9 without using any set of drivers.

 

[SunSamurai]

? This is exactly how I would do that. I dont understand how this is the holy grail of getting yor sata drive enabled. heh

 

[flexy]

i claim you dont need ANY drivers with a recent board and SATA HDs.

The problem seems to be that your SATA drive was not formatted yet..therefore the windows installer crapped out.

Solution: Get Partitionmagic or a similiar 3rd party tool. Before you install Win, prepare, partition, format the SATA drive with partitionmagic.

Then it should work without drivers and everything.

Also...its not clear whether its actually good when you need use drivers for the SATA drive..as said it should work WITHOUT drivers.

 

[android79]

Originally posted by: flexy
i claim you dont need ANY drivers with a recent board and SATA HDs.

The problem seems to be that your SATA drive was not formatted yet..therefore the windows installer crapped out.

Solution: Get Partitionmagic or a similiar 3rd party tool. Before you install Win, prepare, partition, format the SATA drive with partitionmagic.

Then it should work without drivers and everything.

Also...its not clear whether its actually good when you need use drivers for the SATA drive..as said it should work WITHOUT drivers.

I didn't use a 3rd-party tool, but Windows Setup was able to partition and format the drive. It wasn't until I rebooted after the initial setup file copying that it refused to boot off of the drive. I don't have PartitionMagic or the like laying around, but it might be interesting to try it.

I was able to get everything to work with a slipstreamed XP+SP2 disc and my Maxtor SATA drive. Now, if I can just get the stupid onboard LAN to work...

 

[HighCalibreHooch]

Now that I think about it, Windows Setup did attempt to format the drive each time it attempted an install, but it wasn't until I used Seagate's DiscWizard to format it that Windows installed successfully.

Why would the Window's format not work but the Seagate's would?!

 

[November Wolf]

Originally posted by: HighCalibreHooch
Now that I think about it, Windows Setup did attempt to format the drive each time it attempted an install, but it wasn't until I used Seagate's DiscWizard to format it that Windows installed successfully.

Why would the Window's format not work but the Seagate's would?!

Interesting? Mine didnt work untill I reformatted with the Maxtor Blast software. Why I dont know.

 

[Rock Hydra]

Yeah. My RAID controller won't accept the non-RAID drivers, so I just use the RAID drivers. It seems to work, and it works pretyt well, so I'm not complaining.

 

[Furton]

Hope you can help me here, I've just bought this mobo for a mate of mine and having problems with installing XP on a SATA drive already.

1: Tried the standard install method, seemed fine until it formatted the drive then wanted to re-boot, it would go straight to the format section again, took CD out and it would hang on "very dmi pool"

2. Disabled SATA raid, XP couldn't see the drive.

3. Disabled SATA raid, tried to install the drivers by pressing F6, installed fine but XP set up could not see the drive

4. Enabled SATA raid, formatted and copied over set up files, on re-boot I disabled SATA raid, XP came back with Error with disc e.t.c

5. Ran Seagate tools, no errors, got it to format the drive, still couldn't install XP

Any ideas what else to try?

 

[Infohawk]

Why do you say the floppy is optional?

 

[narcotic]

Originally posted by: Infohawk
Why do you say the floppy is optional?

I think he meant, if you allready have it than you don't really need to go and get another one...

Regarding this thread, I'm real worried now, I allready ordered this board and supposed to get it soon, I got Sata WD 160gb-8mb cache to go with it, and I plan to install either win-xp pro sp.1 or sp.2 (I have both). I hope the installation goes smoth, it looks like a pain in the ass getting into all this driver installations. Do you have an idea which of sp.1 or sp.2 installs smoother? and one more, what's slip-streamed CD's?

 

[Trente]

Hey narcotic!

I got the same board, and the same WD HD as yours!

Installation went smoth; Just make sure to turn off RAID in the BIOS and you are good to go!

As for OS installation: either should detect your HD's size properly... a split-stream means that a service pack is integrated into the installation CD.

 

[Infohawk]

Yup, Trente is right on the dot. Sadly there is a lot of disinformation on the net about this board and maybe SATA in general. I had absolutely no problem. Like Trente said, disable RAID in the bios. Also make sure the boot priorities (within hdd) are set right. No floppies (thank god as I did not want one on my new system and I'm glad I didn't need it), no slipstreams, no problem. I also find it a little weird that Gigabyte had certain things like raid enabled by default. I'm thinking people's problems wouldn't have happened if it was disabled. People fancy enough to want RAID can handle enabling it themselves.

If you have problems, ask here, but you shouldn't if you disable RAID in the bios.

 

[narcotic]

Thanks Trente & Infohawk :thumbsup:
This does calm me down a little, I will disable RAID before I install, and hope it goes smooth. Another question, I read here that someone with 160gb HDD, created a partition of 137gb (or somthing like that) to prevent loss of data... Do I need to do it as well? I mean I don't want to partition if I don't have to, so is it a problem installing xp on a 160gb (well it comes down to a bit less, but generaly speaking) partition?

 

[grooge]

I just installed one this morning..

Connect the SATA HDD, and disable SATA RAID in bios.. They are at ENABLE by default.

No drivers needed at Windows setup.

Yet another user error ... and hardware blaming!!

 

[Thre3fan]

Hi guys,

I'm new here. I want to say THANK YOU so very much for this thread. I built a new PC tonight. I was going crazy trying to get XP to install. I followed the suggestions here and voila, I'm up and running. I did exactly as grooge did up above. I have a question though. I notice in my BIOS that my hard drive is listed as an IDE device now. It's listed in the BIOS under IDE Channel 2 Master. Is this okay? Will my PC's performance be degraded? I guess I should've learned a little more about SATA before I tried to build one.

Here's my specs if it helps:

Thermaltake Tsunami case with Tt 400W PSU
AMD Athlon 64 3500+
Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9
XFX GeForce 6600 GT PCIe
Seagate Barracuda 80 GB HD with NCQ
NEC 16X DVD/RW
1 GB Corsair Value Select PC3200
Windows XP

 

[beefthing]

Hey everyone, I'm new here too, and I have been sh*tting bricks trying to install my system, so thanks a LOT! I shall rush off and try to get it going now!

BEEF

 

[friedrice]

I've heard of a few people having problems with setting up SATA on a gigabyte board, however they were nForce3's. On a side note, you are installing SATA drivers not RAID. Also to all new SATA pc builders, it seems some motherboards get confused if you have both SATA and IDE hard drives installed. This is more of a problem with nForce2 and maybe 3 era boards I think. Sometimes you have to set your boot-up to all disabled, and then it will boot off the SATA drive. Kind of weird.

 

[beefthing]

Yeah ok I tried to set up my computer and no luck, I just get a windows error if I disable SATA RAID, I can't even boot off the XP CD, it skips straight to an error screen saying that there is some sort of hardware error, and one must refer to the manuals to get it sorted. Needles to say there is nothing about this sort of problem in my manuals, any suggestions? I really need the CD to boot, but even if I change the boot priority it won't do it. Damn!

BEEF