Trouble installing XP on new serial ata drive

[imported_GrdLock]

Just bought a basically all new computer, and got a 200GB serial ata drive for my only hard drive.

I used a boot disk to get to a prompt, and used fdisk and just made a small 20GB partition on the drive for now and formatted it, etc.

I then went to install Windows XP. It got through the first part of the DOS part of the installation where it copies the files, then the reboot, and when it goes back in for the next part of the installation it goes through the loading drivers part, then when it says Starting Windows, or whatever, I get a STOP error and it halts. It doesn't say any specific error on the STOP screen. Does it every time.

Now, just for a test, I hooked up one of my old IDE hard drives, and tried to install XP on it. It got into the installation just fine with no STOP error. Yes, I tried telling the installation to install XP onto the serial ATA drive, but the WinXP installation didn't even show the serial ATA drive in the menu to select.

Can anyone tell me what the problem is? If I can't get this working by tomorrow when I get off work I'm just gonna say the heck with it and buy a 50GB IDE drive on the way home and use that for my primary hard drive and just use the serial ATA drive as a secondary hard drive, however I'd prefer to use the serial ATA drive as my only drive, seeing as how it's faster, if anyone can tell me what's wrong.

 

[D1gger]

During installation of XP did you hit F6 and load the SATA driver from a floppy. Win XP needs to load a SATA driver to recognize the sata with many sata enabled motherboards.

 

[mechBgon]

Welcome to the Forums What brand and model of motherboard do you have?

 

[imported_GrdLock]

I don't have any floppy with a SATA driver though. It didn't come with one at least. I have an ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe.

 

[Uncle Bob]

They never do come with a floppy disc. You do need to make a driver disc though if you want to boot XP from the SATA drive.

If you have access to another PC, check on the CD rom that came with the motherboard for the Silicon Image drivers, there may be a makedisc utility that will automatically create a driver diskette for you or you may have to copy the files yourself.

During the 1st part of booting from the XP install CD, you will see a prompt at the bottom of the screen 'Hit F6 to install third party driver' (or something similar) press F6 whilst this message is displayed and wait (several minutes) until you are prompted to insert a floppy disc, then follow the prompts.

Good luck

 

[psykohog]

Goto the harddrive manufacturer's website some of them have good software. I just bought
a Seagate and I transferred everything off of my ide drive onto a seriel ata in approx 20 min.
Or put winXP on your old ide and transfer it.

 

[mechBgon]

Yeah, the Asus CD that comes with the motherboard will AutoRun in a Windows PC, and one of its menu items is making a Silicon Image driver floppy. Section 5 of your manual should help you, check it out.