Installing fresh copy of XP on SATA DELL machine

I am having problems getting XP to recognize there being a SATA drive in the machine to install to.

I updated the BIOS and I still have the same problem, which is:

I start the installation of XP, press F6, insert the floppy with the driver for the SATA drive. Follow the instructions. I get to the point where it says it can't find any hard drives to install to.

The system used to be installed on a IDE drive.

The SATA drive is connected via a PCI SATA controller.

Is there something I need to change in BIOS?

Troy

Isn't it the SATA Controller that you need driver for? thats a strange one :/

Had this same problem with my laptop when I wanted to roll back to XP from Vista. I finally gave up, but I have heard that MS has a driver that will let the XP install see the SATA drive. As I understand it you load it by pressing f6 for 3rd party drivers when asked during the installation. Can't swear to this, but that is what I heard. You should search the knowledge base in microsoft.com i guess.

Good Luck!

Montana

reply to post by cybertroy


You could always make a slipstream disk with the driver and sp3 already there.

Also, is this a laptop?

did the computer, whatever kind, orginally come with vista???

What exact OS are you trying to load?

This will help with resolving the issue

If it makes you feel any better, it is a very common issue with sata.

This is a Desktop. XP Home SP1.

I had an adapter to convert a 4 pin molex to SATA. After I got that hooked up correctly the system recognized that the drive was actually there. I had the molex adapter hooked up but some of he pins pushed backward out of the plastic housing, so I wasn't getting power to the drive like I should have.

I just caught this today.

At first I had no power running to it, other than what may have been coming from the SATA cable.

My first install, however, got messed up somehow and froze. You know how Windows is. Once I started over with the install it went smooth.

As a note, I did pull the CMOS battery out for a few minutes (I have heard 5 minutes), to reset the BIOS settings. Now it's not looking for drive 0, or giving me the "press F1 to continue" message. I suppose you could just manually change the settings.

Anyway, looks good so far.

Troy

Well, I had things running somewhat. I finally got the right driver installed for the contorller. The SATA was fast at installation, but it still did not play well with the computer. I would be installing a piece of hardware, wham, the machine would lock up. It especially didn't like the Sound Blaster card.

After messing with it for a while, I said the heck with it. I am sending it back, I was sent the wrong kind of drive anyway. I ordered IDE, I was just trying to save time by giving the SATA a try.

There were obviously some sort of compatibility issues that hadn't been resolved.

I went to Wal-Mart and picked up an IDE drive. No problems like that of which I experienced with the SATA drive. The re-install has been quite smooth. so far.

Troy

When I installed Windows XP on a system with SATA drives, I had to put all the necessary drivers (just the sata controller usually) on a floppy and loaded it for the installation to use. Like someone else suggest, you could always go the custom route and unattended with something like nlite.

Yeah, I used a floppy, pressed F6 for RAID or third party drivers.

I don't know, it just didn't play well with this particular machine. It should not have caused these problems.

Much of the hardware out there installs quite easily without problems.

I'm not sure what I could have done to make it work right. Unless there was something in the card's "utility" program that needed to be changed.

Troy