Harry said:
Can anyone tell me how to insert a driver for a cdrom at the F6 prompt
one sees during windows install?
Apparently the older media I'm using does not contain drivers for a
lite-on ihas324 sata cdrom.
I have not been able to find a driver for it yet, but if and when I
do, how would I insert that driver after using the F6 prompt.
It asks for some special MS disk with more drivers. I don't have such
a disk, but wondered if I might be able to insert a floppy with the
driver on it.
Anyway a little coaching about how to insert special drivers would help.
The CDROM drive will not need a driver itself. (Or rather, anything it
needs, is built into the OS. So Microsoft files are used.)
The Southbridge disk interfaces need drivers, according to the mode
you've placed them in. IDE emulation modes (IO space or PCI space native
drivers) are provided by WinXP if you have a recent enough Service Pack
version. The only install disc that might be a problem is WinXP Gold
(original release) CD with your SATA hard drives.
Other modes available on a Southbridge, might be AHCI and/or RAID. On
WinXP, you'd need to install a third party driver if you want those.
Usually, you'd be doing the "floppy diskette, press F6" thing, in
order to get the hard drive recognized. You can't install, unless
some driver is present to make the Southbridge work. On the next
reboot, you'd get an "inaccessible boot volume", if there was
no driver present to reach the disk.
If you went to the Liteon web site, you'd find perhaps a firmware
update for the drive. But you're not going to find a driver package,
as none is needed. The OS takes care of that. By designing to standards,
at least the reading functions work without a fuss. Certain burning
functions are only available with third party tools (such as burning
a DVD in WinXP). But if you want to read a disc and get data from it,
the existing drivers like cdrom.sys, imapi.sys, redbook.sys, storprop.dll,
are provided by Microsoft.
So to solve whatever problem you're having, it all starts with a
visit to the BIOS, and a check of the mode the Southbridge
disk interfaces are set to. If you need further help, please
post the motherboard make and model. Or provide a web page with
pictures of the BIOS screens, for advice.
An inaccessible boot volume could happen, if the BIOS disk
interface mode has been changed, since the OS was installed.
That's why it is important to understand what mode was
used when the installation was done, so you can later detect
a change in the settings. That doesn't explain though, why
you're able to boot that OS (with it's dead keyboard and
mouse interfaces). Perhaps you need to press F6 and offer
a driver, so the WinXP CD can see the hard drive ? It sounds
like the BIOS mode has changed (as otherwise, if you were
using that mode during the initial installation, you'd
remember having to use a floppy with drivers on it).
BIOS settings can be lost under the following conditions:
1) Kids play with computer and screw up BIOS settings.
For example, using the "Load Setup Defaults" function might do it.
2) An Asus motherboard is used, and its "overclock recovery"
option is triggered for no apparent reason. (A garden variety
processor crash at startup is enough to do it.) The BIOS
settings are reset when that happens. That was real
annoying on my P4C800-E Deluxe, as I did have to correct
some disk settings.
3) A dead BIOS battery, plus AC power removed, could cause
the settings to be lost. The defaults established on next
power-up, might not be correct. I ran one computer with
a flat battery for a few weeks, and got pretty tired of
having to enter the BIOS and set it up again after turning
on the ATX power supply.
HTH,
Paul
