Installing XP on newly built PC

[Guest]

I've been having problems instlaling Windows XP. Here's what's happening:

First, I just did an install. Everything seemed to work fine, but I found
that I could not boot off of my hard drive after the installation -- it keeps
telling me to replace the disk with a bootable one (even though I told it in
the bios boot off of the hard disk first).

So I went into repair mode and did what I read in another thread, to make
the disk bootable, but it didn't help.

This is my second motherboard, btw -- first one I was told was faulty. I
remembered on the other one, the manufacturer had told me that I needed to
load SATA drivers during the Windows installation. This one LOOKS like it
only has RAID drivers, not simple SATA drivers, but I figured It was worth a
shot (not like what I was doing was working).

So I start to reinstall Windows (deleted the partition, recreated it,
reformatted it).
I pressed F6 and inserted my floppy with the drivers, and it read them fine.
Next it comes to the part where it tells you to reinsert the floppy. First
of all it thinks that they are scsi drivers. Second, it won't recognize the
floppy. It keeps asking for the disk -- I press enter to continue but
nothing happens. I can't tell if it's even trying to read from the floppy
drive.

BTW, in case it's important, the floppy drive is external, and plugged into
a USB port. I don't have an internal floppy drive (well I do have one that's
not plugged in because I don't have a 3.5" slot without removing a necessary
fan).

Anyway, I'm stuck, and I'm not sure what to do next. I'd appreciate any help.

 

[Guest]

When you boot off XP installation disk it does not load usb drivers let, it's
to early during setup, I would reconmend hooking up a internal floppy
temporary so you can get hard drive control drivers installed, after that you
can remove the floppy drive.

Thanks

 

[John John]

Only a select few USB floppy drives are supported for the text mode
portion of the setup, see here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/916196

You can slipstream the drivers to a Windows CD or you can use an
internal floppy disk drive, even if only temporarily for the
installation. You don't have to mount it in the drive cage, you can let
it hang or rest in a safe location and remove it once the installation
is completed.

John

 

[Guest]

I eventually solved this problem, but thanks. Everything is working fine on
the new PC now except for a slow communications problem that probably has
nothing to do with Windows. The problem with booting was in the Bios
settings. It WAS booting off of the hard drive, only it was the wrong hard
drive (I have 3). For some reason, I assumed that if you number the drives
Sata 1, 2, and 3, that 1 would be the first by default (I had made this
assumption without even thinking about it). Turns out that it was wrong.
Once I figured that out, the installation was simple.