Win 2000 & XP won't install on my SATA hard drive?

RayMondo

Hi all...

Can anyone explain why my XP Professional Service Pack 2 and Windows 2000 Professional won't install only my SATA hard drive, it's a DELL Dimension 9150 ... I've checked the hard drive and it works perfectly, but during installation after a minute or two a screen asks me something along the lines "setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer..." as I've said before the drive works perfectly with the OS running perfectly, I've read somewhere that there is a problem with SATA drives installing Windows and to get around this problem one needs to install a hard disk driver from the XP installation CD and put on a floppy disk and run it during the setup, does anyone know where on the XP CD this driver is and how does one install it during the installation process to install the OS? I would appreciate any advice!

Mondo :-D

ethernet

You're right -- you'll need to load a driver for your SATA drive when booting the Windows installer.

Try visiting your the website of your HDD manufacturer and have a look for a suitable driver. This is usually copied to a floppy.

Boot from the Windows CD and, at a certain stage, you'll see a little message saying to press such a key to load a driver for a SATA drive.



Some people have followed online guides to integrate the SATA driver onto a new Windows CD to avoid having to use a floppy [especially if you don't have a floppy drive].

tman

ethernet wrote:

Some people have followed online guides to integrate the SATA driver onto a new Windows CD to avoid having to use a floppy [especially if you don't have a floppy drive].

There's barely even need for a guide if you use nlite to integrate the drivers, bloody handy little program!

DarkJager

Is the hard drive formatted into NTFS or Fat 32?

seamus

DarkJager wrote:

Is the hard drive formatted into NTFS or Fat 32?

Shouldn't really make a difference, as the OS will format the drive anyway if you ask it.

Newer copies of XP SP2 and Server 2003 come with SATA support included in the release, so if you can get your hands on one of those disks, it can relieve the burden.

That said, there's nothing like nlite to take the pain out of Windows installs.

stanley1

Autostreamer can integrate sp2 + original xp disc into 1 bootable cd., have used it many times, windows updates will do its job once you have installed os.

RayMondo

Thanks ethernet for all your help, and to others who have so far contributed to the discussion, in actual fact I found it very hard to find a device driver on the HDD manufacturer's website, but I came across something that somebody else had come across that solved the problem without the need for device drivers, here's the remedy for the problem:

Users who do not have a RAID disk system may see an error message during installation indicating that there are no hard drives present in the system. If this occurs a change in the BIOS is required. Restart the system and press F2 to enter the system bios. In the main BIOS screen scroll down to drives and press <Enter> or + to expand the drive menu then scroll down to "SATA Operation" and press <Enter>. Change the SATA operation mode to "RAID Auto/ATA" press ESC to save and exit the bios. After making this change, Windows XP should install without a problem.

seamus

RayMondo wrote:

in actual fact I found it very hard to find a device driver on the HDD manufacturer's website

Just for future reference, you don't really need a driver for the hard drive. That's probably why you found it so hard to get a driver.

The OS talks to the hard disk controller on the motherboard, not directly to the disk itself (for all intents and purposes). To install a SATA drive in Windows, you need to get the drivers for the motherboard, not the actual hard drive.