Green SATA HD Install on XP/A7N8X Dlx

[markjen]

Hi, I know there has been a bunch of posts on this, but if someone can give
me a concise step-by-step on how to do a SATA HD install on a green./new
A7N8X Dlx mobo (1005 Bios) with only the SATA drive, I'd appreciate it.

I've got the system up and running in the BIOS setup and booting from a DOS
floppy. It appears that it recognizes the SATA drive (a Seagate Barracude
7200.7 120GB) in that it puts up a message about the drive just before
attemping to boot from the HD. (The BIOS seems to know nothing about the
drive in the IDE stuff, but I assume this is normal.) Of course, it
eventually fails to boot with a "No System disk" error since the drive is
green. I'm unclear at this point exactly what to do to get XP installed on
the HD: Boot Seagate's Disk Wizard from floppy to do the low-level
partioning and formatting, get SATA drivers onto a floppy from the ASUS CD
for use by Windows XP (which ones?), or simply start the XP install and hope
that it has the drivers to do the format and install. The Seagate support
pages talks about getting drivers ready during the early part of XP install,
but the doesn't provide the drivers - I assume they think you should get
them from the system/mobo provider. The drive had no docs whatsoever. I'm
not sure whether my XP CD has SP1 either - it is about one-year old.

Thanks,

- Mark

 

[Chris C]

Hi, F6 at the first start-up screen, with the floppy in, the select 's' and
load the XP drivers, keep the floppy in....
Chris C

 

[markjen]

Hi, F6 at the first start-up screen, with the floppy in, the select 's'
and

load the XP drivers, keep the floppy in....

Thanks for help. So I use the drivers off the mobo CD? Another post
mentioned:

TxtSetup.oem
Si3112r.inf
Si3112r.mpd
Si3112r.sys
SIISUPP.VXD

which I see in the root of the Drivers/SATA folder on the CD. Look right?

- Mark

 

[IanDunbar]

Thanks for help. So I use the drivers off the mobo CD? Another post
mentioned:

TxtSetup.oem
Si3112r.inf
Si3112r.mpd
Si3112r.sys
SIISUPP.VXD

which I see in the root of the Drivers/SATA folder on the CD. Look right?

Get the latest SATA drivers here; http://tinyurl.com/rs17
And if you want the latest Bios including updated SATA bios go here;
http://tinyurl.com/rs1h scroll down the list and find your mobo revision and
download the correct bios.

HTH

 

[markjen]

Get the latest SATA drivers here; http://tinyurl.com/rs17

And if you want the latest Bios including updated SATA bios go here;
http://tinyurl.com/rs1h scroll down the list and find your mobo revision and
download the correct bios.

Thanks. I ended up using the files off the mobo CD and I'm formatting the
drive from the XP install program as I type. Maybe I'll upgrade BIOS and
drivers later, but right now I'm trying to keep things as simple as
possible.

This stuff is NOT straightforward - I was getting some kind of strange
conflicts between the CD/DVD IDE device, the HD just disappeared from view
of the system for awhile, and I still am getting random hangs at "Verify DMI
Pool" which have caused me to disable floppy booting to get it to boot from
the CD. And I occasionally still get a memory check failure in the POST
which has me worried the perhaps my 3200 CL3 memory (rather than the
recommended 3200 CL2.5 memory) is the root cause of randomness. But I keep
trying different things and eventually a combo works. I'm moving forward.

- Mark

 

[Chris C]

Hi, download memtest86 from here http://www.memtest86.com/ bott from the
floppy it's created and run the tests for obout an hour. If you get any
errors soften the memory setting and re-run memtest. If you still get errors
then return the module back to the supplier....
Chris C