XP will not boot up from SATA hard drive

[Guest]

I just finished building a new system (the specs of which are listed below)
and after spending hours and hours attempting to install Windows XP
Professional to the SATA hard drive, I finally figured out how to do it. I
was having major problems getting XP to install to the SATA drive. It would
appear to copy the files there during the pre-install, but when it rebooted,
I would either get an error message (disk read error occurred) or the system
would just sit there doing nothing. I tried installing the SATA drivers via
floppy disk and F6 during the pre-install and that did not change things.
Finally, someone suggested disconnecting my secondary PATA hard drive and I
did so, along with my Zip drive which was on the same IDE channel. XP
installed successfully onto the SATA drive.

Now to the current problem. Once I went in and reconnected the PATA hard
drive and the Zip drive, XP once again will not load. The SATA drive is set
as the first boot device in the BIOS, but for some reason it just will not
load as long as the PATA drive and the Zip are connected. I also tried
disconnecting just the PATA hard drive and leaving the Zip and still no go. I
just keep getting the error message "A disk read error occurred. Press
ctrl+alt+del to restart." I am totally stumped as to what else to do. Any
suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance,
Dmwc

SYSTEM SPECS:
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-M55SLI-S4 (rev. 2.0) with F8 BIOS
Video Card: EVGA GeForce 7600GT 256 MB
RAM: 2 GB, 667 Mhz (2 X 1 GB sticks)
Primary Hard Drive: Seagate 300GB SATA II drive
Secondary Hard Drive: Maxtor 45 GB IDE
DVD Drives: Lite-On 20X dual-format DVD burner
NEC 16X dual-format DVD burner
Other drives: Zip 250 drive
Floppy drive

 

[Shaun]

When I built my system, had same problem. When I had my sata as the boot
drive or master, I could not use the pata master only the slave. The
secondary 2 channles worked fine. So When using the sata I lost the master
on the pata. I recently lost the sata and replaced it with a IDE pata and it
works like normal. Might try your stuff with no master on the primary ide
channel.

 

[Anna]

I just finished building a new system (the specs of which are listed below)
and after spending hours and hours attempting to install Windows XP
Professional to the SATA hard drive, I finally figured out how to do it. I
was having major problems getting XP to install to the SATA drive. It
would
appear to copy the files there during the pre-install, but when it
rebooted,
I would either get an error message (disk read error occurred) or the
system
would just sit there doing nothing. I tried installing the SATA drivers
via
floppy disk and F6 during the pre-install and that did not change things.
Finally, someone suggested disconnecting my secondary PATA hard drive and
I
did so, along with my Zip drive which was on the same IDE channel. XP
installed successfully onto the SATA drive.

Now to the current problem. Once I went in and reconnected the PATA hard
drive and the Zip drive, XP once again will not load. The SATA drive is
set
as the first boot device in the BIOS, but for some reason it just will not
load as long as the PATA drive and the Zip are connected. I also tried
disconnecting just the PATA hard drive and leaving the Zip and still no
go. I
just keep getting the error message "A disk read error occurred. Press
ctrl+alt+del to restart." I am totally stumped as to what else to do. Any
suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance,
Dmwc

SYSTEM SPECS:
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-M55SLI-S4 (rev. 2.0) with F8 BIOS
Video Card: EVGA GeForce 7600GT 256 MB
RAM: 2 GB, 667 Mhz (2 X 1 GB sticks)
Primary Hard Drive: Seagate 300GB SATA II drive
Secondary Hard Drive: Maxtor 45 GB IDE
DVD Drives: Lite-On 20X dual-format DVD burner
NEC 16X dual-format DVD burner
Other drives: Zip 250 drive
Floppy drive

Dmwc:
We'll assume that your PATA HDD and its data cable are non-defective and
that you've properly connected/cofigured that drive to a non-defective IDE
channel. And you've tried another IDE channel as well. That's right, isn't
it? You've checked out the PATA HDD with a HDD diagnostic from Maxtor, yes?

And we'll further assume that the problem you relate is present when the
only other storage device that's connected in your system other than your
SATA boot drive is your PATA HDD, right? Let's forget about the Zip drive -
set it aside.

And if *only* the SATA HDD is connected (no other storage devices connected)
you can boot to it without incident and it functions without any problem
whatsoever, right? The problem manifests itself *only* when the secondary
PATA HDD is connected?

I'm assuming the PATA HDD is a non-bootable drive, right? If it *is*
bootable, can you boot to it?

So what happens when you get that "disk read" error message? The system will
continually reboot?

You've gone over your Gigabyte user's manual re the BIOS settings - reviewed
it carefully - and all looks well? You've paid particular attention to the
BIOS settings re your SATA HDD, right?
Anna