XP Install

[munga]

Thanks to everyone that offered their help here.

I've given up on recovery and I'm trying to re-install. Here's where I stand.

I have a 36gb SATA Raptor that was previously split into two partitions with XP home installed on the first and two logical drives on the second. The first partition used to be the C: drive, but it is now the E: drive (not sure how this happened). I also have a 80GB IDE drive that I used to use for storage. It now has XP home installed on it and is the C: drive. From this instance of windows, I can see the sata drive, it's partitions and drives, and access the data therein. The problem was that when I tried to run repair console, it could never find the sata drive.

So I got frustrated with it and reformatted the partition that XP used to occupy. I tried to install XP there and neither winstaller nor repair console could find the sata drive. If I boot into my current installation, there's the drive, there's all the stuff. So what's my problem? Sata drivers on floppy? Sata cable? Any thoughts on general direction to take? Thanks.

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

It depends upon whether the windows XP CD can recognize your SATA controller natively.

You may have to insert the floppy with your SATA drivers to get it to recognize properly.

 

[munga]

Originally posted by: JustAnAverageGuy
It depends upon whether the windows XP CD can recognize your SATA controller natively.

You may have to insert the floppy with your SATA drivers to get it to recognize properly.

Thanks for pointing that out. I've tried drivers from both the mobo mfg (Abit) and HD mfg (Western Digital) on floppy after hitting F6. Neither allow the win XP CD installer nor the repair console to recognize the SATA drive in any way, shape, or form. This is much different than when I built this rig and had no problems installing XP on the SATA drive with floppied drivers. OTOH, once in my IDE-based windows install, I can see the SATA drive without problem.

I'm starting to think it has something to do with the master boot record (or lack thereof) on the SATA drive. Would this make a difference?

 

[rasczak]

i posted a reply about this in your other thread. i believe you have a hard ware issue you might want to test out.

 

[munga]

Well whaddya know! When prompted for sata drivers, I can only see four choices. Although there's nothing to indicate it, I CAN SCROLL DOWN AND SEE MORE DRIVER CHOICES.

Right driver, problem solved. Many thanks to those who offered help. The lesson is a familiar one: I'm an idiot.