I have had an awfully hard time trying to install XP PRO SP2 on a new 250G SATA hard drive, WD2500KS. The motherboard is a Gigabyte K8N Ultra SLI.
For the first WD2500KS, I tried to first clone the existing IDE boot drive, a 120GB IDE, but I could never get it to work. So, I booted from the XP PRO CD, deleted the partitions and then created a 31G partition, formatted it as FAT32, and told XP to install itself there.
Now, a weird thing is that if I installed the SATA drivers using F6 at beginning of installation like Gigabyte tech support told me to, the installation would hang very early with a message saying, Setup is starting Windows. Dead. OTOH, if I installed no drivers, the installer could still see the drive, let me delete and recreate the partition, and continue the install. But 5 minutes after the first reboot, the installation would die with a peculiar message: "Error copying IEXPLORE.EX_." And if I tried to continue anyway, every other file also had a copy error.
I repeated install attempts many, many times, replacing power supplies, memory, checking memory. In all cases there were no other drives connected when I did the install except the floppy, DVDRW and CDRW. Now the floppy drive does have a card reader (no cards installed) that is connected to a USB port, more on that later.
Some other configuration things:
1. RAID is disabled for the NVidia controllers 2. Te BIOS reports the disk as an IDE drive on channel 2 during POST.
3. There is nothing wrong with the XP PRO CD. I have used 2 different XP PRO SP2 original CDs and a copy of one of them.
TO determine if I just had a bad disk, I tried to install XP on this same disk on another computer by disconnecting all its drives, connecting the WD2500KS to SATA port 1, and booting from the XP PRO CD. I got exactly the same behavior on the other computer.
So I concluded it was just a bad disk. But it tested perfect in the 4 hour test software DLDIAG from the WD website. I RMA'd it anyway.
OK, so here's what happened with WD2500KS#2. I first tried to install XP without loading the SATA drivers using F6. Amazingly, the XP Installer did not detect any disks on my system! Hmmm, I thought, maybe Gigabyte TS is right, and it IS necessary to install the drivers using F6 even though the drive appears during POST as an IDE on channel 2. So, now I load the drivers from floppy using F6 at the beginning of install, it can see the disk, I create a 31G partition, format it and tell XP to install on the new partition.
Installation runs to completion! This is working just like it is supposed to, but unfortunately, the drive is assigned drive letter G and I can't seem to install the motherboard drivers from its CD successfully. I notice that there are two USB devices -- the floppy's card readers and both CDROMs assigned drive letters CDEF!
So I disconnect the USB/card reader and figure it will be easy to just redo the entire installation.
Not so easy, because now WD2500KS#2 acts exactly like WD2500KS#1 did. IOW, if I load the SATA drivers using F6 at the beginning of XP PRO installation, the installer hangs with the message, Setup is starting Windows. If I DON'T load the drivers using F6, the installer can still see the disk (unlike the virgin WD2500KS disk!), I can create a 31G partition and format it, but the Windows installation fails 5 minutes after the first reboot with the IEXPLORE.EX_ copy error! MADDENING!
I think this has something to do with the fact that the disk has somehow been MARKED as being in NON-LBA mode. The Windows installer, when it sees a disk with a single 31G partition (even a screwed up half-installed 31G Windows partition) and some empty space -- it does not use LBA addressing, which causes errors once Windows reboots.
I did finally manage to install Windows successfully. I deleted the partition and told Windows to install on the 232G empty space using NTFS.
I will use Partition Magic to reduce the partition size. (I like to keep my OS separate from programs and data.)
But why the heck can't the XP Installer figure out that a 31G partition on a 232G disk needs to use LBA addressing? Is there some fault in the BIOS that could cause this, or is this a fault in Windows? The fact that I had the same kind of problems using another motherboard tells me it is a Microsoft problem.
For the first WD2500KS, I tried to first clone the existing IDE boot drive, a 120GB IDE, but I could never get it to work. So, I booted from the XP PRO CD, deleted the partitions and then created a 31G partition, formatted it as FAT32, and told XP to install itself there.
Now, a weird thing is that if I installed the SATA drivers using F6 at beginning of installation like Gigabyte tech support told me to, the installation would hang very early with a message saying, Setup is starting Windows. Dead. OTOH, if I installed no drivers, the installer could still see the drive, let me delete and recreate the partition, and continue the install. But 5 minutes after the first reboot, the installation would die with a peculiar message: "Error copying IEXPLORE.EX_." And if I tried to continue anyway, every other file also had a copy error.
I repeated install attempts many, many times, replacing power supplies, memory, checking memory. In all cases there were no other drives connected when I did the install except the floppy, DVDRW and CDRW. Now the floppy drive does have a card reader (no cards installed) that is connected to a USB port, more on that later.
Some other configuration things:
1. RAID is disabled for the NVidia controllers 2. Te BIOS reports the disk as an IDE drive on channel 2 during POST.
3. There is nothing wrong with the XP PRO CD. I have used 2 different XP PRO SP2 original CDs and a copy of one of them.
TO determine if I just had a bad disk, I tried to install XP on this same disk on another computer by disconnecting all its drives, connecting the WD2500KS to SATA port 1, and booting from the XP PRO CD. I got exactly the same behavior on the other computer.
So I concluded it was just a bad disk. But it tested perfect in the 4 hour test software DLDIAG from the WD website. I RMA'd it anyway.
OK, so here's what happened with WD2500KS#2. I first tried to install XP without loading the SATA drivers using F6. Amazingly, the XP Installer did not detect any disks on my system! Hmmm, I thought, maybe Gigabyte TS is right, and it IS necessary to install the drivers using F6 even though the drive appears during POST as an IDE on channel 2. So, now I load the drivers from floppy using F6 at the beginning of install, it can see the disk, I create a 31G partition, format it and tell XP to install on the new partition.
Installation runs to completion! This is working just like it is supposed to, but unfortunately, the drive is assigned drive letter G and I can't seem to install the motherboard drivers from its CD successfully. I notice that there are two USB devices -- the floppy's card readers and both CDROMs assigned drive letters CDEF!
So I disconnect the USB/card reader and figure it will be easy to just redo the entire installation.
Not so easy, because now WD2500KS#2 acts exactly like WD2500KS#1 did. IOW, if I load the SATA drivers using F6 at the beginning of XP PRO installation, the installer hangs with the message, Setup is starting Windows. If I DON'T load the drivers using F6, the installer can still see the disk (unlike the virgin WD2500KS disk!), I can create a 31G partition and format it, but the Windows installation fails 5 minutes after the first reboot with the IEXPLORE.EX_ copy error! MADDENING!
I think this has something to do with the fact that the disk has somehow been MARKED as being in NON-LBA mode. The Windows installer, when it sees a disk with a single 31G partition (even a screwed up half-installed 31G Windows partition) and some empty space -- it does not use LBA addressing, which causes errors once Windows reboots.
I did finally manage to install Windows successfully. I deleted the partition and told Windows to install on the 232G empty space using NTFS.
I will use Partition Magic to reduce the partition size. (I like to keep my OS separate from programs and data.)
But why the heck can't the XP Installer figure out that a 31G partition on a 232G disk needs to use LBA addressing? Is there some fault in the BIOS that could cause this, or is this a fault in Windows? The fact that I had the same kind of problems using another motherboard tells me it is a Microsoft problem.
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