Missing operating system

[Redbird]

Building an all new system:


HD 160GB|WD SATA2 WD1600JS
EPOX EP-9NDA3J nForce3 ULTRA RT
CPU AMD 64 |3000+ ATHLON 64
2x512 Corsair Value

Everything works beautifully until I install XP on the new drive. After first reboot during clean install I will get "missing operating system."

Bios detects the drive fine. Older drives will boot fine, and the new WD will work fine as secondary drive. I originally formatted it under XP this way, but later dropped all the partitions, tried /fixboot, fdisk /mbr, fdisked to make sure it is active partition. WDC diagnostic tool shows no errors.

Please tell me this is just a case of a bad boot sector (despite WDC diagnostics). I'd hate to RMA this and get the same problem with another drive. Appreciate any help thanks.

 

[Fardringle]

Did you install the SATA2 drivers at the very beginning of the Windows XP installation where it says something like "Press F6 if you need to install SCSI drivers"? If not, that's probably the cause of your problem.

 

[stevty2889]

Did you have other drives in the system at the time of install? There seems to be a lot of issues with installing to a sata drive if you have any other hard drives in the system at the same time. Does your windows CD have SP1 or SP2?

 

[Redbird]

Thanks for the replies.

My XP cd is SP1. No I didn't know about installing SATA drivers. Foolish as I am, I thought I could just plug it in and have it work.

I have since made a SATA driver floppy from the Epox installation disk, pressed F6 during XP install and loaded the SATA drivers (XP SP1, no other drives in system). No matter what I do, after first reboot I will still get "Missing operating system". Sometimes windows install will say that it cannot find a drive.

My mboard manual gives no instructions for installing SATA drives, it only discusses setting up RAID arrays. Is it the case that SATA drives can only be used with RAID with this mboard?

I have tried every IDE and SATA bios setting. I tried enabling RAID. I don't see any option to set it to boot from SATA (or SCSI for that matter). I would appreciate any more pointers, thanks.

 

[stevty2889]

It is a common misunderstanding that people think you HAVE to have the SATA drivers to install to a SATA drive, that is no longer the case. If the windows install recognizes the drive without the drivers, you don't need them, and you don't have to have raid enabled either. I've had 6 sata drives, and the only ones that required drivers..were my raptors in raid-0. I am guessing that it's a bios setting somewhere, that is keeping you from booting. Make sure that you are set to boot CD-ROM first, and then hard drive, and make sure that your SATA hard drive is set as the bootable hard drive, because most new motherboards have not only the option for boot order, but they also have boot order for specific types of drives as well.