XP Setup doesnt see SATA drive

J

Josh

When i am trying to install Windows XP Home Edition or
Professional Edition onto a Sata hard drive it says it
does not find a hard drive to install windows on and tells
me to push F3 to cancel, then it makes me reboot.
Please Help
 
P

Paul Bobrowski

During initial startup of the Windows XP installer a message will popup
telling you to press F6 if you need to load additional drivers. When this
message appears press F6. Later in the install after the drivers included
in the installer are loaded you will be prompted to insert a floppy with
drivers on it. Insert a floppy disk with the SATA drivers on it and
continue the install. The installer should now see your SATA hard drive.

If you don't have a floppy drive or can't find the drivers to put on a disk,
you can go into your BIOS and try seeing if there is an option to place the
SATA controller into "legacy" mode. If this option is there you should be
able to complete the Windows XP installation without loading additional
drivers. Loading drivers off a floppy is the preferred method.
 
J

Jenifer D. Scot

One last option is to download the driver from the
internet. then you can load it from your saved location.
 
S

Star Fleet Admiral Q

FYI - you can only load drivers during the Interactive Setup Portion of XP
from floppy disk - it doesn't have drivers loaded yet for the hard drive (as
this is what the OP is trying to load) or for the CD drive.
 
G

Guest

Alright, starting off, I'm not that computer literate, however, I am familiar
with putting comps together and some tech info. Though I'm at a halt.
Everything hardware-wise is connected properly in my comp. (My system is at
the bottom)
I am trying to go through Windows XP Pro setup (the 6 floppy disk setup from
www.microsoft.com/) as well as setting up my SATA drivers through another
floppy so that my hard disk drive will be picked up. I go through three
floppies of the windows xp setup and half way through the fourth floppy, it
basically asks me to put the floppy in that has my drivers. After windows
setup asks me for the driver disk, it reads the floppy and then it gives me
the screen to where i'd have to press the 's' key to choose the third party
drivers i want to load. I hit 's' and it continues with two choices:

NVIDIA RAID CLASS DRIVER
{and}
NIVIDIA NForce Storage Controller

I was wondering if there is a certain order I have to load these, or if I
only need one, or what. If you could help me, I'd very much appreciate it!
What happened first is I chose only the NVIDIA RAID CLASS DRIVER. Before the
end of the fourth windows setup floppy disk, it gives me the error:
'nvraid.sys not found' I've checked the floppy with the SATA drivers on it,
and surely enough, it does have nvraid.sys; is there a problem here?? and how
bad??

System:
AMD Athlon 64-bit CPU
Chaintech Zenith ZNF3-250 NVIDIA Chipset
80GB Seagate 7800 Barracuda hard disk drive
Radeon 9600 series video card
(Trying to install Windows XP Pro)
 
B

Buck Rogers

On Fri, 24 Dec 2004 11:17:01 -0800, Dom

(snip)
I am trying to go through Windows XP Pro setup (the 6 floppy disk setup from
www.microsoft.com/) as well as setting up my SATA drivers through another
floppy so that my hard disk drive will be picked up.
(snip)

System:
AMD Athlon 64-bit CPU
Chaintech Zenith ZNF3-250 NVIDIA Chipset
80GB Seagate 7800 Barracuda hard disk drive
Radeon 9600 series video card
(Trying to install Windows XP Pro)


Hello,

If you're trying to install XP on a SATA drive with no RAID
environment, you don't need to load the drivers from the floppy disk.

If you are installing an original version of XP with no service packs,
I don't think your SATA will be recognized.

IIRC SATA started to be recognized with SP1

I have two SATA drives (without RAID) and they're recognized with XP
SP1 or SP2 but not the original XP version.

My assumption for the floppy boot is you don't have CDROM? If you do,
why not boot from the CD? Maybe the floppy disk set is outdated?

YMMV HTH

Buck
 
P

peter

You need to load the storage controller.......not necesarily the RAID driver
since you most likely will not be using RAID with one SATA drive.
peter
 

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