Possible to install to SATA drive without floppy?

[Chris Oates]

Is there any way to install XP pro to a machine that only
has an SATA drive and a DVD drive? No floppy. When I
press F6 to install my SATA drivers, it only checks for a
floppy drive. (Hey Microsoft, that IS a bug, or at least
a stupid oversight that should be considered a bug)

I do not own, and I refuse to buy, another floppy drive.
I threw all of mine out a few months ago. Good
riddance. I have a USB flpppy in the rare once in a
decade time I need to read a 1.44 disk, but XP install
doesn't like that any more than my SATA drive.

This is annoying and stupid.

Chris

 

[Shenan Stanley]

Is there any way to install XP pro to a machine that only
has an SATA drive and a DVD drive? No floppy. When I
press F6 to install my SATA drivers, it only checks for a
floppy drive. (Hey Microsoft, that IS a bug, or at least
a stupid oversight that should be considered a bug)

I do not own, and I refuse to buy, another floppy drive.
I threw all of mine out a few months ago. Good
riddance. I have a USB flpppy in the rare once in a
decade time I need to read a 1.44 disk, but XP install
doesn't like that any more than my SATA drive.

Look into slipstreaming the driver into the CD.

 

[Dave M]

if the motherboard has intel ichr5 sata and you are not running raid you
don't need to load drivers. just enable sata, and disable sata raid, in the
bios. I have sata running on xp pro w/o adding extra drivers.

 

[Chris Oates]

Dave M,

Thanks for telling me how it was supposed to work. That
led me to discover that there was a bug in my BIOS that
would not allow the RAID function to be turned off. A
cumbersome BIOS upgrade later (via burning a DOS-boot
CDR) I'm able to get XP to be happy. Thanks.

 

[Dave M]

glad it worked. you mean I did something right!!!!

 

[grant]

i,am having the same problem and your right it is
annoying and stupid. please let me know if you figure
this one out Ta!!