AstroManLuca
Lifer
Well, I did use the search here to see if I could find a solution to my problem, and I did indeed find a lot of problems with SATA hard drives. Unfortunately, none of them seemed to be the same problem as the one I'm having.
For a while I have been using a rather old 40 GB hard drive to boot from. I got an 80 GB about a year ago as extra storage and just recently, I've built a new system and decided to use a single Seagate 200 GB SATA hard drive for everything. But I can't seem to get Windows installed on it. I can boot from the WinXP CD to format the hard drive and prepare it for installation, but once the computer reboots, it gives me an error telling me that it had an error loading the OS. I've tried most of what people have suggested: I used my motherboard's CD to make a SATA driver floppy which I loaded using F6. That didn't change anything. Besides, I can still see and use this hard drive both in the XP startup CD and when booting from my old 40 GB drive. I have messed around with boot orders and also tried disconnecting all my drives other than the SATA hard drive when trying to install, all to no avail. I even downloaded a Seagate utility that copied the entire contents of my 40 GB drive over to my new 200 GB drive. But when I tried to boot from it, it gave me the exact same message - "Error loading OS."
Someone at a different forum said he had to prepare his Seagate SATA drive by using some kind of utility Seagate made, but he didn't elaborate enough. A lot of people have fixed their SATA drives by loading the drivers from a floppy using F6, but it didn't help me. Is there anything else I can do? Why can I do everything EXCEPT boot into Windows with it? I could always keep the 40 GB as a boot drive and just use the 200 GB for storage, but I'm hoping to clean out the inside of my case a bit and use the newer, faster drive to boot from.
For a while I have been using a rather old 40 GB hard drive to boot from. I got an 80 GB about a year ago as extra storage and just recently, I've built a new system and decided to use a single Seagate 200 GB SATA hard drive for everything. But I can't seem to get Windows installed on it. I can boot from the WinXP CD to format the hard drive and prepare it for installation, but once the computer reboots, it gives me an error telling me that it had an error loading the OS. I've tried most of what people have suggested: I used my motherboard's CD to make a SATA driver floppy which I loaded using F6. That didn't change anything. Besides, I can still see and use this hard drive both in the XP startup CD and when booting from my old 40 GB drive. I have messed around with boot orders and also tried disconnecting all my drives other than the SATA hard drive when trying to install, all to no avail. I even downloaded a Seagate utility that copied the entire contents of my 40 GB drive over to my new 200 GB drive. But when I tried to boot from it, it gave me the exact same message - "Error loading OS."
Someone at a different forum said he had to prepare his Seagate SATA drive by using some kind of utility Seagate made, but he didn't elaborate enough. A lot of people have fixed their SATA drives by loading the drivers from a floppy using F6, but it didn't help me. Is there anything else I can do? Why can I do everything EXCEPT boot into Windows with it? I could always keep the 40 GB as a boot drive and just use the 200 GB for storage, but I'm hoping to clean out the inside of my case a bit and use the newer, faster drive to boot from.
