Help Loading W2K on Virgin P4C800 With ONLY SATA Drives

[Steve Sr.]

I am attempting to load W2K on a new P4C800 that has only SATA drives
set up on the ICH5 SATA ports.

The W2K install program gets as far as loading the all the drivers and
then hangs at the "Welcome to Setup" screen where you press "Continue"
"Repair" or "Quit". Pressing F6 (or not) at the begining doesn't seem
to make a difference. Setup never asks for any drivers anyway. The F6
prompt mentions only RAID drivers and the system is not setup for RAID
in the BIOS. I also have the Promise RAID controller disabled in the
BIOS since there is nothing attached.

My Guess is that W2K is hung because it can't find or talk to the hard
drives which are also currently unformatted since they are new. Does
anyone know how to get around this issue?

Thanks,

Steve

 

[BoB]

W2k doesn't support the serial controller, obviously, try
this page for a f6 driver(inf) file
http://tinyurl.com/u0ng
Just because you are not using raid doesn't mean that you don't have to have
a driver for the OS to use the controller chip!
There's probably already a make disk for the chipset on the CD!

 

[Steve Sr.]

BoB,

I managed to finally get the right INF files.

The problem though is that Win2K Setup hangs even though I pressed F6
and never asks for any drivers. I am assuming that it needs the SATA
(ICH5R) INF file which I now have but apparently hangs before it gets
there.

I took a brief look at the M$ knowledge base last night and it
indicates that there might be some issues with the ACPI in the BIOS
and Windows Setup hanging so this might also be an issue. Does this
ring a bell with anyone? How did you get around it?

Thanks,

Steve

 

[DaveW]

You need to install W2K SATA drivers (are there such things?) during the
first portion of the Windows setup when you're asked to install RAID or ANY
3RD PARTY DRIVERS from a floppy. Otherwise W2K has no idea what an SATA is.

 

[Steve Sr.]

Dave,

Yea, I understand this part but setup NEVER asks for any drivers! It
must be hung before it gets this far.

Steve

 

[Roger Hamlett]

Dave,

Yea, I understand this part but setup NEVER asks for any drivers! It
must be hung before it gets this far.

Steve

Setup, won't ask for drivers on it's own. As the install starts, at the very
first screen, you have to hit 'F6'. Nothing will happen at this point, but
it sets a flag, to tell the installer to request drivers latter. There is a
message put on the bottom of the screen for a few moments to say this, but
on some machines it is there for such a short time, that it is easy to miss.
is.

Best Wishes

 

[Steve Sr.]

UPDATE -

I just made a set of 4 setup floppys to try to at least see if the
machine would boot this. It boots the first floppy and asks for the
second but refuses to go any further.

It is begining to appear that W2K setup is not taking any *keyboard*
input for some unknown reason. The keyboard that I'm using is an old
PS2 122 key from Gateway / Maxi-Switch. This keyboard works fine in
the BIOS. Is windows only looking for a USB keyboard or something
else?

Any thoughts? Right now i'm up for anything!

Steve

 

[Steve Sr.]

UPDATE - 2

I tried switching the BIOS to PNP O/S = Yes and the machine won't even
try to boot anything so I guess its not that so I switched it back.

It will boot Win 95 from a single floppy and the keyboard works after
the boot is completed including CTL-ALT-DEL.

With the Win 2K Setup the keyboard is completely catatonic by the time
it asks for input. CTL-ALT-DEL doesn't even work. It's like the
keyboard interrupt gets shut off by the setup program. Is there a
switch in the BIOS that might keep this from happening?

Steve

 

[Steve Sr.]

UPDATE - 3

I Turned off all ACPI and APM in the BIOS. I even disabled the USB
controller all without effect.

I next did a test to see when the keyboard stopped responding. I
continued pressing the CAPS LOCK key while the machine was booting
from floppy. The CAPS LOCK light on the keyboard stopped responding
shortly after the "Windows Is Inspecting Your Hardware..." message
comes up.

Based on this it appears that the keyboard interrupt is being shut off
by Windows and never gets turned back on. Go figure...

Sorry, It's too late to figure and I've wasted entirely too much time
with this MicroShaft crap. I wish I could get up close and personal
with Bill Gates right about now!

Steve

 

[Schus]

Just my 2 cents.
I have just finished building my P4C800 and there are a few things to watch
out for.
When posting press the delete key and set up your sata in the bios. When
finished it will call to press F6 key. If you have a key board that has a
key that enables the F function keys you will need to press it, usually more
than once during the boot operation. If you don't the F6 key will not
function. Sometime later you will be asked to press control I to configure
your raid. After that its a walk in the park. Although brief I hope it
helps

 

[Steve Sr.]

UPDATE - 4

Thanks for everyone who offered suggestions for this issue. I randomly
fell into the following solution:

I finally got the install past this point by clearing CMOS memory on
the motherboard. I then went back and started putting the BIOS
settings back where they were trying to figure out which one was
responsible for the problem. I got them all put back and setup still
worked. Go figure...

The only thing I can think of that might have caused this is that
Memtest86 or Doc Memory overwrote part of CMOS and confused Windows
Setup. Or there may have just been random garbage in a location that
Windows didn't like.

Win2K didn't seem to have a problem with the SATA controller. It
partitioned and formatted its own partition and let me partition the
remaining drives. I hit F6 to try to load the SATA driver but Windows
was looking for a "TXTSETUP.OEM" file which I didn't have for the
ICH5R chip so I just went past this step.

Now if I could just get Windows to detect the keyboard and the mouse
but this is a subject for a different thread!

Steve