Installing XP On SATA Without Floppy

[Gary Brown]

Hi,

I need to reinstall XP. The floppy was smoking last time it was connected.
I slipstreamed the SATA driver into XP with NLite but it wouldn't install.

1) Is there a known good XP install image on the 'net with
a SATA driver slipstreamed into it?

2) Is it possible to install onto a PATA drive then clone onto
the SATA and get the MBR and other "magic" boot stuff?
Or at least preserve the existing MBR and stuff thus still boot?

Thanks,
Gary

 

[Malke]

Hi,

I need to reinstall XP. The floppy was smoking last time it was
connected. I slipstreamed the SATA driver into XP with NLite but it
wouldn't install.

1) Is there a known good XP install image on the 'net with
a SATA driver slipstreamed into it?

No, unless it's pirated. And even then, it would have to have the right SATA
controller drivers.

2) Is it possible to install onto a PATA drive then clone onto
the SATA and get the MBR and other "magic" boot stuff?
Or at least preserve the existing MBR and stuff thus still boot?

3. Yes, but not without quite a bit of fiddling. A better solution would be
to replace the floppy drive or use a USB floppy drive.

Malke

 

[SC Tom]

No, unless it's pirated. And even then, it would have to have the right
SATA
controller drivers.


3. Yes, but not without quite a bit of fiddling. A better solution would
be
to replace the floppy drive or use a USB floppy drive.

Malke

Doesn't SP2 and SP3 support SATA out of the box? Wouldn't slipstreaming an
XP CD with one of these service packs solve the problem of SATA recognition?
I may be mistaken, but I thought I read that discussion either here or in
one of the forums I've read.

SC Tom

 

[R. McCarty]

XP ( Sp2/3 ) has no native support for SATA in AHCI operating
mode. For many chipsets, simply toggling the BIOS setting to the
Legacy operating mode allows XP to install without supplying any
drivers. Other chipsets will always require a clean install to have a
driver supplied or slipstreamed.

 

[Twayne]

Doesn't SP2 and SP3 support SATA out of the box? Wouldn't
slipstreaming an XP CD with one of these service packs solve the
problem of SATA recognition?
I may be mistaken, but I thought I read that discussion either here or
in one of the forums I've read.

SC Tom

Yes, XP since SP2 at least has had SATA drive support. I don't know
about SP1.
I noticed that some people were having to use driver disks for SATA
drives so did a little research on it, mostly at Wikipedia.com and a
couple of drive vendors.

Most SATA drives are recognized by XP and it provides drivers for them.
However, some brands of SATA drives, for whatever reason, don't function
with XP's drivers and do require separate drivers. Apparently those
requiring separate drivers are in the minority though.
I know when I installed my first SATA drive the system detected it
and loaded it up fine. The only thing I had to do was get out Disk
Management to assign it a drive letter. Later I added another SATA
drive since I had one connector left, and it installed the exact same
way. Install it, see it in the BIOS, go to Disk Management and assign
the drive letter and all was well. One I had to format and the other
one came preformatted.
Apparently other windows OS's do too. If the SATA connectors are
present on the mobo, apparently there will be drivers with the windows
OS.

There is one caveat I just remembered: If the mobo doesn't have the
SATA controller cktry and drives, then it doesn't load the SATA drivers.
You have to use Add/Remove's Add or Remove Windows Components to get the
SATA drivers added. At least that's what I've read; I haven't needed to
do it yet to any system I've worked on; they've all had the SATA
connectors ready for use. Nowadays IDE drives are beginning to
disappear in new machines in favor of the SATAs. They're a pleasure to
install compared to the IDE cabled types.

HTH,

Twayne

 

[Patrick Keenan]

Hi,

I need to reinstall XP. The floppy was smoking last time it was
connected. I slipstreamed the SATA driver into XP with NLite but it
wouldn't install.

1) Is there a known good XP install image on the 'net with
a SATA driver slipstreamed into it?

2) Is it possible to install onto a PATA drive then clone onto
the SATA and get the MBR and other "magic" boot stuff?
Or at least preserve the existing MBR and stuff thus still boot?

Thanks,
Gary

No. What you can do is to go into the BIOS, shift the SATA controller into
legacy or IDE mode, and do the install. After the install is complete,
install the SATA drivers, then boot back into the BIOS and reset to Native
mode.

Alternately, you can get a USB floppy drive for about $20, but be aware that
sometimes Setup accepts the driver and then ignores it, and you have to
shift modes anyway.

HTH
-pk

 

[Patrick Keenan]

Doesn't SP2 and SP3 support SATA out of the box? Wouldn't slipstreaming an
XP CD with one of these service packs solve the problem of SATA
recognition?
I may be mistaken, but I thought I read that discussion either here or in
one of the forums I've read.

Depends on the drive controller, and you cannot take for granted that it
will work.

HTH
-pk

 

[Lil' Dave]

Yes, XP since SP2 at least has had SATA drive support. I don't know about
SP1.
I noticed that some people were having to use driver disks for SATA drives
so did a little research on it, mostly at Wikipedia.com and a couple of
drive vendors.

Most SATA drives are recognized by XP and it provides drivers for them.
However, some brands of SATA drives, for whatever reason, don't function
with XP's drivers and do require separate drivers. Apparently those
requiring separate drivers are in the minority though.
I know when I installed my first SATA drive the system detected it and
loaded it up fine. The only thing I had to do was get out Disk Management
to assign it a drive letter. Later I added another SATA drive since I had
one connector left, and it installed the exact same way. Install it, see
it in the BIOS, go to Disk Management and assign the drive letter and all
was well. One I had to format and the other one came preformatted.
Apparently other windows OS's do too. If the SATA connectors are
present on the mobo, apparently there will be drivers with the windows OS.

There is one caveat I just remembered: If the mobo doesn't have the SATA
controller cktry and drives, then it doesn't load the SATA drivers. You
have to use Add/Remove's Add or Remove Windows Components to get the SATA
drivers added. At least that's what I've read; I haven't needed to do it
yet to any system I've worked on; they've all had the SATA connectors
ready for use. Nowadays IDE drives are beginning to disappear in new
machines in favor of the SATAs. They're a pleasure to install compared to
the IDE cabled types.

HTH,

Twayne

Sounds like SATA is a tertiary controller, and you have ide as primary and
secondary in the scenario you described. In that case, the SATA drives are
added as data only type disks. They are not boot drives and can't be
configured that way in the bios. At least with some of the early SATAs it
was that way. XP, including SP3 revision incorporated in setup, could not
find such SATA drives on such systems if utilized on the SATA controller.
They are/were supported in XP as data drives.

The remap in bios settings does work with these SATA drives mapped as ide,
supporting them as boot drives in the particular situation I'm speaking of.
They cannot be configured to boot drives while configured as SATA. At least
on some specific early systems I've seen. I have one.

 

[Twayne]

Sounds like SATA is a tertiary controller, and you have ide as
primary and secondary in the scenario you described. In that case,
the SATA drives are added as data only type disks. They are not boot
drives and can't be configured that way in the bios. At least with
some of the early SATAs it was that way. XP, including SP3 revision
incorporated in setup, could not find such SATA drives on such
systems if utilized on the SATA controller. They are/were supported
in XP as data drives.
The remap in bios settings does work with these SATA drives mapped as
ide, supporting them as boot drives in the particular situation I'm
speaking of. They cannot be configured to boot drives while
configured as SATA. At least on some specific early systems I've
seen. I have one.

Hmm, interesting; thanks for the update. AFAIKnew you could select one
as a boot drive in all sytems from the BIOS as long as it knew about
SATA; never gave it any thought to otherwise. This is a 5 year old sys
tem but I did flash the BIOS a couple years back for a different reason
and it'll boot from a SATA (supposedly; haven't tried it). I'll keep
that in mind.

Regards,

Twayne

 

[Anna]

Gary:
1. First of all, we'll assume your reference to a "reinstall" of the XP OS
means a fresh-install of that OS.

2. You've rec'd a number of responses to your query 1) so I won't address
that issue.

3. Your proposal to install the OS onto a PATA HDD and then clone the
contents of that HDD to a SATA HDD may be a viable workaround. Not, perhaps,
in terms of manipulating the MBR or incorporating some "magic boot stuff",
but possibly along the following lines...

I'm assuming that you've not been able to invoke some BIOS motherboard
setting (as has been suggested to you) that would permit you to directly
install the XP OS onto a SATA HDD without the SATA controller driver being
installed during the setup process.

So...

Install the OS onto your PATA HDD. Access Device Manager and determine if
there's an entry (probably under "Other devices") referring to "RAID
controller" or "SATA controller", or some such. Presumably if there is such
an entry it will be preceded by a question mark.

Assuming that entry is present, and further assuming the motherboard's
installation CD includes the necessary SATA controller driver, insert the
CD, right-click on the appropriate DM entry and select "Update Driver".

Via the "Hardware Update Wizard" navigate to the location of the driver on
the CD and let the system install it.

Hopefully the appropriate SATA controller driver will be installed and
reflected in DM probably listed in a newly-created "SCSI and RAID
controllers" (or some such) section.

Finally, as you suggest, clone the contents of the PATA HDD to your SATA
HDD.
Anna