250gb SATA HD + clean XP install = NIGHTMARE!!

I have a Gateway NX860X laptop here and the HD crashed. So I grabbed a brand new 250gb SATA drive, formatted it NTFS thru the USB port on a different PC, and popped it in the laptop. XP setup didn't see the drive (BIOS does) so I hooked up a USB floppy drive, created an 'F6' SATA driver disk for the Intel ICH7 Mobile chipset, and restarted the XP setup. This time I pressed F6 at the appropriate moment, loaded the drivers from the floppy as I've done dozens of times on other PCs, and XP setup saw the drive and let me format it again. But right after the format, when setup says "Checking Drive C:...." and then says "Creating list of files to be copied" it stops, and goes to a screen that says "Insert Intel Storage Matrix Manager in Drive A: - Press Enter When Ready". But the thing is, the disk is in the drive already, and pressing Enter does nothing - the floppy drive doesn't spin up, removing the disk does nothing, different disks do nothing. It's like the floppy drive itself disappears at this point, and the XP install is basically impossible.
HELP!!!!

(Just for kicks, I installed Windows 7 w/o a hitch; I then reformatted the drive and installed Vista just to see what would happen; both Vista and W7 install fine like I figured they would, but XP craps out right before the file copy part of setup is supposed to start)

 

You need to use XP SP1 or later to overcome the 137Gb limit.

 

http://support.gateway.com/support/drivers/search.asp?st=pn&param=1008645
:confused
Originally had MCE and 80 GB HDD ?

 

:confused What's this got to do with XP not recognizing the hard drive? I said nothing about the size of the drive being wrong. And I know about the size limit and only someone stuck in 2002 would use SP0 to install Windows. The problem I'm having is with XP not seeing the SATA drive due to the whole "F6" driver issue which I explained thoroughly. Thanks, but way off the mark.

Yup. I'm trying to reload MCE to the new drive. I've used the Intel SATA drivers from both the Intel site and the Gateway site, and the same thing happens each time: I can format the drive to it's full 250gb capacity but as soon as setup tries to copy the files over, it prompts for the Intel Matrix Storage Manager again but will not access the floppy drive, as if the floppy drive is suddenly gone.... I'm looking into maybe slipstreaming the SATA driver into the XPMCE install disc using nLite and the info at this link, hopefully that will work...

 

Must admit that I have that happening very occassionally (2-3 times) as well. The getting stuck in the endless F6 loop.

When I hit that glitch, I normally slipstream the driver and that has so far gone without a hitch.

I know that there are many 'how to' on this topic but I settled on the instructions in the link below because I wanted to do it manually. However, a couple of user comments on the maximumpc page do refer to Nlite as an easy alternative

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/How-To--Slipstream-your-XP-installation?page=0,0

You will need ISO Buster which is free and burning software.

Good Luck

 

:celebrate :hyper :dancer :cloud9 :dood

Yeah, I'm happy! I used nLite to create a new XPMCE install disc by slipstreaming the SATA drivers, SP3, and all the post SP3 updates into the image, then burned it, booted to it on the troublesome PC, and things are hunky-dory!!!!

I'm a happy boy!
:-D

 

Good to know dlb.

Was nLite easy to use? Did nLite burn the ISO or did you require burning software? Your link above seems to suggest that nLite will also burn the disc.

Cheers

 

Do you think this technique would work for installing a SATA drive in an old IDE drive PC? I have been trying to do this using an adapter card which comes with a driver CD. The instructions with the adapter tell me to unzip the driver files and copy them to floppy but I don't know which are the correct files from the relevant folder and the folder is over 20MB i.e. too big for a floppy. Presumably if adding files to the XP CD it would not matter if I put in the entire contents of the folder?

 

Right, I had a go using the driver file download from Intel as it's only about 300KB unzipped. I burnt it to CD on the laptop and tried to copy that to floppy in the desktop (desktop has no internet at present). CD was not accessible on the desktop for some reason so I had to transfer the files using an XD photo memory card. I got the files onto floppy, started the XP CD but when it gets to the press F6 bit it ignores the keyboard and goes on to the F2 stage. If you press F2 it does respond so I don't know what's wrong with F6. Looks like I will have to try the nLite software. :banghead