A7N8X Dx SATA-only boot...

[Phut]

I have an A7N8X Dx 1.04 BIOS 1004 and am trying to install a Maxtor 120GB
SATA under WinXP as the boot drive.

I had an IBM 13GB IDE drive as boot drive and a Maxtor 40GB IDE slave drive
for data. I took out the IBM drive and left the Maxtor since it has many
programs drivers etc on it. I installed the SATA in its primary slot with
the mobo jumper and 'boot other device' enabled. I was doing a fresh install
of WinXP. I booted from the XP CDrom, hit F6 and installed the SI drivers
(10033), pressed 's' and continued with the isnatllation.

When finished, I found that the SATA was listed as drive F and the PATA as
drive C. Seemed odd but it worked okay. However, I decided I would like the
SATA as C. I decided to reinstall WinXP with the PATA drive unplugged, then
put it back after WinXP had named the SATA as the C drive.

I unplugged the PATA IDE cable and power leaving the SATA plugged in and
booted from the WinXP CDrom. The SATA boot RAID configuration came up but
could not find the SATA drive and, after the SATA driver install via F6 etc,
nor could WinXP. Odd. I checked the cabling and all looked fine. But my cpu
fan was working fine off the same psu power strand. I used another power
cable and still the same problem. I tried another SATA cable but still had
the same problem of the SATA not being seen. I decided to put the PATA drive
back as it was with the SATA and boot. As expected the SATA drive came up
too. I still had WinXP etc on it and so here I am online again. Odder and
odder.

Anyone else find this? Surely I should be able to use the SATA drive as the
'only' drive in a system. Any ways around this?

TIA

 

[Ben Pope]

I have an A7N8X Dx 1.04 BIOS 1004 and am trying to install a Maxtor
120GB SATA under WinXP as the boot drive.

I had an IBM 13GB IDE drive as boot drive and a Maxtor 40GB IDE slave
drive for data. I took out the IBM drive and left the Maxtor since it
has many programs drivers etc on it. I installed the SATA in its
primary slot with the mobo jumper and 'boot other device' enabled. I

Boot from SCSI.

Ben

 

[Paul H]

in the bios under Advanced, PCI configuration, ensure onboard ATA boot rom
is enabled and onboard ATA device first is set to yes
then under boot the option SCSI/Onboard ATA Boot Device should be selected
and moved to second from the top (I think you have done this) Your Cdrom
drive should be first
when booting from CD you must press f6 and install the promise drivers from
floppy
THEN the SATA drive will be recognised.......

hope this helps....