Ive bought a few new toys a Gigabyte mobo (GA-K8NF-9) 3000+ 64bit AMD CPU and a 160GB SATA hard drive.

Ive downloaded the drivers from the Gigabyte website, copied them to a floppy and inserted my WIN XP disc.

It loads fine. I press F6 and install the 3rd party drivers as requested and then it continues to install Win XP. I select the install Windows and it then comes up that it cannot find a hardrive and cannot continue to install WinXP and quits.

Its driving me flocking mad. I knew I should have bought a sodding IDE H/D and tom dick are Harry can do those but this is peeing me off !

Tried a friends copy of WINXP as his copy has SP2 onit but that wouldnt even load in the cd drive (but would in the lappy so presume its non bootable) any ideas how to make this a bootble copy ????

Bless help before I go bald !

Cheers chaps/chappess'

 

I know all about SATA drives!

Is it showing up in the BIOS?

or are you wanting it to be party of a new raid array?

 

Have you set the BIOS to use the SATA channel?
Make sure the drivers that are on the floppy are not in a folder, if they are windows will not see them I found out the hard way

Mark

 

where would it be in the BIOS screen ?

Looked under STandard CMOS features and it only shows IDE's

Wheres the SATA's gonna be ?

As for this raid array malarkey Im completely lost. It says I can press F10 to setup mirrors etc but all I want is the SATA drive to be my main drive and to have WIN XP installed on it??!?!??

Is it really this flockin' hard ?

 

ok in the bios somewhere there will be something about using IDE or SATA etc.

Once that is enabled the mobo will pick up the motherboard and treat it like a IDE drive. You wont need those "Third Party Drivers"

You got a link to the manual for the mobo? Ill see what section in there tells you how to do it

 

right went into INTERGRATED PERIPHERALS

IDE/SATA RAID FUNCTION - enabled
IDE Primary Master RAID - Disabled
IDE Primary Slave RAID - Disabled
IDE Secondary Master RAID - Disabled
IDE Secondary Slave RAID - Disabled
Serial-ATA 1 - Enabled
SATA 1 Primary - Enabled
SATA 1 Secondary - Enabled
Serial-ATA 2 - Enabled
SATA 2 Primary - Enabled
SATA 2 Secondary - Enabled

I would guess by the above settings that the SATA setting is enabled ?

 

oh and the link to the mobo manual from their website

http://www.giga-byte.com/Motherboard..._GA-K8NF-9.htm

 

I run SATA on a Gigabyte board and you need to go into "intergrated peripherals" in the bios and enable the SATA ATA and set to "base" if you are only using one SATA drive. Also disable the IDE channel for the time being as windows allways wants to use an IDE drive to install on and if you give it no choice it will have to use the ATA.
I had to make a driver floppy from the CD rom that came with the motherboard, press F6 when loading windows etc and later during the install you will be asked to push "S" if I remember correctly to finish installing the drivers. Mine is using a 10,000rpm 37GB Western digital SATA drive for the OS and a 80GB Seagate 7200rpm for dumping files and it flies

EDIT as your board is much newer than mine by the look of your last post, try disabling the IDE though until you get it going
Hope this helps.

 

just changed this:

IDE/SATA RAID FUNCTION - enabled

to DISABLED and got:

Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware config. problem.

Could not read from selected boot disk

 

since disabling the IDEs It now comes up with IDE Channel 3 Master = Maxtor 6L160M0 (my SATA drive) but it still wont bloody load !

 

The above looks OK to me and it is probably a driver problem, your floppy drive should show some activity as the drivers are loaded, is the floppy working OK? Double check that you just have the driver files on the floppy disc and NO folders.

Mark

 

the floopy loaded both of the drivers. and then continued to load winxp. When I got to the load windows - press ENTER if came up that it coud not find any hardrive and was unable to continue ?

 

right.

If I disable the IDEs then It shows the SATA drive in the BIOS. If I enable the IDEs (so I can boot from the CD) it does not show the H/Drive ????

 

any one ?

 

As previously said It asks a SECOND TIME, if you want to install the drivers, I think its just after the first reboot.

I've been in exactly the same position, I kept missing the second request.

That was on a Gigabyte board and 160 Sata.

 

Now I remember!
If the drives are new and unformated they will not work in some cases, I had exactly the same problem when I first fitted my Seagate SATA drives.
You need to go to the drive manufacturer website and download some tools that you put on a floppy, boot from the floppy and format the disc and then it will work

Give it a go

Mark

 

i have managed to format it but it wont recognise anything ?????

 

I am right out of ideas, sorry

Jim with the 24 valve Saff is a computer wizz, it might be worth asking him.

Mark

 

have managed to get the bios to recognise the cd drive AND the harddrive but my copy of winxp is PRE sp1 so am waiting for a friends bootable copy with SP2 on. Til then I cant go and further. If I use my copy it comes up with :

NTLDR is missing, Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart ?

Any other info greatfully received !

Realll wish I'd bought a flocking IDE drive now, much less hassle ! If I ever get this damn drive working it bloody better be so much quicker for the hassle its caused !

Anyone wishing to 'lend' me a copy of WINXP+SP2 PM me please or email me (addy in the sig)

 

When you copy the drivers over for sata on to the floppy make sure they are in the root directory of the floppy disk. even if you select them it wont work, check and make sure of this.

Dont bother disabling IDE this and that, if you disable both IDE channels you cant use the dvd/cd drives. What serial ATA port is it using? try swaping onto a dif port to see if that helps.

 

The drivers are on the root tony and I realised the hard way about disabling the IDEs !

Also tried swapping over the sata ports. Wasnt sure if it had to be in a certain one but tried 'em all

 

It was my old copy of Win XP. Just 'obtained' a copy of WIN XP + SP1 that works and everythings peachy.

New problem ! I've added my 2 old IDE hard drives but the puta now hangs at the boot up test screen. I unplugged one but still did the same, unplugged the other and no joy. went into the bios and noe the cd drives arent recognised. Unplug both hard drives and all works again.

What have I done this time

Thanks (again)

Andy
__________________

 

Ignore me again ! Im being an idiot !!!



try plugging the IDE cabel ound the right way on the mobo !!!!!



Wahay it all works !!!!!!!!



Thanks all

 

Well done
It drive you mad when things don't work

SATA kicks IDE butt

Mark

 

only problem now is I spent 5 hours installing all my software only to forget to install the SP2 disk.

Put it in and it self extracted and installed. Then it Hung, and now it wonty foooking boot.

Keeps coming up with cannot find NTLDR again. Looked into it and apparently if you boot from cd you can copy the file from there. tried that and no joy. So everything I copied over from my old master onto my new sata master (which I then deleted off of my old master) has gone !!!!!!!!!!

Flock Flock Flock

Oh well. Re-install time AGAIN !!!!!