vista 32 installer can't see the hdd

[konakona]

As I was trying to help my friend out setting up his system, I got stuck at the OS installation with vista failing to see the hdd connected to the on-board IDE controller. I am not all to familiar with how AHCI works, though I did check the bios to see if there were any pertinent settings on that (none found). The installation CD that came with the mobo had a folder named "RAID" under drivers, so I tried loading that up anyway at no avail.

Perhaps it is worth mentioning that the hdd is set as the slave device, that shouldnt make a difference as long as the bios sees it right? Without the vista DVD in the optical drive, I managed to get the "BOOTMGR is missing" error message, which confirms the hdd functioning properly.

 

[VirtualLarry]

IDE HDs aren't supposed to be slaved to an optical ATAPI drive. That's against the standard.

 

[konakona]

the burner is a SATA device, so it is on a separate channel... Maybe I will keep looking for that missing jumper and report back when I find it 🙁

 

[ViRGE]

It's definitely the slave thing. I doubt it's actually slaved to the optical drive, in which case it can't be the slave unless there's a master. WD drives were particularly picky, they had 3 modes (solo master, master for master/slave mode, and slave for master/slave mode).

 

[konakona]

Originally posted by: ViRGE
It's definitely the slave thing. I doubt it's actually slaved to the optical drive, in which case it can't be the slave unless there's a master. WD drives were particularly picky, they had 3 modes (solo master, master for master/slave mode, and slave for master/slave mode).

to much dismay, that wasnt the case; the BIOS now sees the drive as the master on IDE3 (PATA, I assume), but vista still says no drives available. Is it a norm to load drivers for ATA controller even when you aren't using hdds in raid configuration?

EDIT: oh yeah, forgot to mention that when I hit browse to load the driver, [New Volue (C🙂] is right ghere! this is what it looks like:


Computer
|-New Volume (C🙂
|-CD Drive(D🙂
|-Boot (X🙂

what gives?

 

[Nothinman]

IDE HDs aren't supposed to be slaved to an optical ATAPI drive. That's against the standard.

Using the term standard when talking about PATA is pretty funny, just about everyone implements parts of it a little different.

Is it a norm to load drivers for ATA controller even when you aren't using hdds in raid configuration?

Sure, the OS needs drivers for the controller regardless of the mode in which you're using it.

 

[konakona]

yeah, but what I am referring to is whether you have to load the drivers manually in vista 32 installer. doesnt look like there is much discussion on that on the web except some SATA drivers requiring the manual load. the seagate drive I am trying to use here is a PATA, all by itself on its channel.

 

[Nothinman]

yeah, but what I am referring to is whether you have to load the drivers manually in vista 32 installer.

And that depends on the chipset in use, Vista bundles a lot of drivers that XP doesn't so more hardware works out of the box but not everything will.

 

[konakona]

manufacturer's webpage says the board sports an ICH7 controller, so I downloaded the driver found on that page (I swear, I didnt see that last time I opened that page..)

anyway, I tried loading the following:

Intel(R) 82801G (ICH7 Familiy) Ultra ATA Storage Controllers - 27DF (E:\Vista\ich7id2.inf)
Intel(R) 82801G (ICH7 Familiy) Ultra ATA Storage Controllers - 27DF (E:\Vista\ich7ide.inf)
Intel(R) 82801GB/GR/GH (ICH7 Familiy) Serial ATA Storage Controllers - 27C0 (E:\Vista\ich7id2.inf)
Intel(R) 82801GB/GR/GH (ICH7 Familiy) Serial ATA Storage Controllers - 27C0 (E:\Vista\ich7ide.inf)

all of them would end up in "No new devices could be found. Make sure the driver files are correct and located on the driver installation media."

just to be sure, the hdd is properly configured as the master device on the PATA channel. what else is there to try?

 

[mechBgon]

If the drive is used, which I'd guess a 7200.7 would be by now, then you might try fully erasing it as well. A quick round of DBAN would do the trick for sure.

 

[konakona]

Darik's Boot and Nuke ("DBAN") is a self-contained boot floppy that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction

OUCH! good thing I read that line first! I mean, dont try this on your main with hdds full of useful data by all means! :Q

thanks, I am definitely going to try this after dinner 🙂

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: konakona

Darik's Boot and Nuke ("DBAN") is a self-contained boot floppy that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction

OUCH! good thing I read that line first! I mean, dont try this on your main with hdds full of useful data by all means! :Q

thanks, I am definitely going to try this after dinner 🙂

There's also a bootable .ISO so you can burn a DBAN CD if you prefer. Sorry I didn't point out that it'll nuke ALL detected drives 😱 but if you're setting up Windows, you should ideally have just one HDD in the system (and no USB drives / flash drives / card readers) so there's no ambiguity about which drive gets the bootloader and letter C:.

 

[konakona]

Originally posted by: mechBgon

Originally posted by: konakona

Darik's Boot and Nuke ("DBAN") is a self-contained boot floppy that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction

OUCH! good thing I read that line first! I mean, dont try this on your main with hdds full of useful data by all means! :Q

thanks, I am definitely going to try this after dinner 🙂

There's also a bootable .ISO so you can burn a DBAN CD if you prefer. Sorry I didn't point out that it'll nuke ALL detected drives 😱 but if you're setting up Windows, you should ideally have just one HDD in the system (and no USB drives / flash drives / card readers) so there's no ambiguity about which drive gets the bootloader and letter C:.

no worries, I tend to read all the documentation rather carefully (well, most of the times 🙂) FYI yeah I do have just that one hdd since this is going to be a system for a minimalist friend of mine. now, lets see if it works 😀

edit: well, it wont let me write the image files to my usb drive. a pop up window that merely asks "retry: yes/no" doesnt tell us a whole lot either 🙁 That was on a vista machine though, let me try it in XP.

for what it's worth, i took a hint from what you said about wiping the drive out and did a quick format in diskmgr and made it active, still the problem persists.

 

[konakona]

I am quite confused about whats going on with DBAN and my kingston 2gb usb flash drive. My first intuition was the vista compatibility, but no, XP was giving me hte same "retry" pop-up window without any further explannations.

Considerable amount of effort was put into googling with no useful results. apparantly, another member had a very similar case here, and unfortunately no one could give him much help, either.

I am starting to suspect the QC on the ECS board... hope the warrranty is still good, I bought it at my local fry's (no need to worry about return shipping cost)

 

[konakona]

I did happen to have a UBCD 3.3 disc here, should I try wiping the HDD out with that? Last thing I tried was copying a working vista 32 onto the drive and it failed on boot (something with winload.exe)

 

[konakona]

:thumbsdown:Finally! I used the seagte disk manager included on that UBCD and that surely worked like a charm. I still dont see how exactly vista diskmgr formatting would render the drive invisible during the vista setup phase... vista diskmgr FTL