Can't Put XP on SATA

Tried to install XP on my WD ST3300831AS (5NF1JLAJ). Have only one. Put in diskette when asked for by XP Pro sp2, but it refused to put Windows on it. Do I need to have two on a RAID? Have a ASUS K8V-X SE motherboard with AMD 3400+ processor.

Works ok on IDE Maxtor 6Y250P0 (Y65B5E5E).

Thanks for any possible help!

 

how many drives do u have installed? and is any of ur drives is IDE?

 

Two drives - one IDE Maxtor 6Y250P0 and one ST330083 1AS SCSI Disk Device

 

Unplug the IDE/Maxtor then try installing XP to your SATA, after install then you can plug the IDE back in.

I'm not filmilar with your MOBO but you might have to install SATA drivers during install.

 

Tried that. Still did not work.

As I said, got to put in the diskette for the RAID at the beginning of the XP install when asked for, it saw the diskette information but refused to go any further - said it didn't see a drive. BIOS sees it.

Since I do not use the RAID, per sae, I never really installed the program from the diskette, though it shows the RAID program with the 1 SATA drive fine on bootup.

 

Might be some BIOS setting need adj.
Whats your Boot order? SATA enabled? Some system have multiple SATA ports, try another

After checking BIOS settings the next thing I'd do is run WD Diagnostics (DataLifeGuard Tools) I also prefer the Utility for Formating & Partitioning


Post your system specs


When setting up SATA drive for Windows installation, Boot order should be CD rom first, then SATA 2nd, then if you use one your Floppy

 

When I set the BIOS to boot from the SATA, it would if there was an operating system. Boot order when trying to install WinXP Pro, is SATA alone. Tried other ports and that didn't help. Tried that order. Even Floppy, CDROM and SATA. Nothing again.

Did the DataLifeGuard Tools and everything is fine. Tried formatting via that and then tried to let WinXP install do it. Neither way worked.

 

If you want to Install Windows an your SATA drive The Boot order has to be set:
1st CDROM
2nd SATA
Any other way wont work!

Also any other HDD's need to be disconnected temporarily

If the Utility runs you should be able to Format with it, try Advanced mode.
Run HDD setup, Format, select Advanced mode, use NTFS file system


You also need to provide system Specs, MOBO CPU Memory etc.

 

I did this all too, sad to say. CDROM/SATA - no other drives. Had SATA formatted NTFS through WD program. I did all that. It does not let me do it - at all. No matter if drive formatted or not.

I might try again tomorrow, but after several times, doing all I could, nothing is working. I will try formatted drive, boot CDROM/SATA and see if it asks for files on diskette again. That is where the issue lies. After that, XP says no drive.

 

Have you tried downloading the latest SATA drivers form the website?? The drivers that come in the mobo package might be old enough to be causing a hardware conflict with your hardware config!?!?

Roger

 

When XP setup say's no drive then usually because one hasn't installed the Third party drivers (the SATA/Raid drivers via F6 function some system need Raid drivers even if not running raid)

Sounds like you need to install SATA/RAID drivers


Why don't you post you Specs?
If you or anyone whats help,the First thing to do is post your system specs!
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/announcement.php?f=22



Spec's from one of my Puters, I OC so I listed some particulars related:

DFI NF4 UT Ultra D with SLI mod "BIOS, 704 Big Toe"
Opteron 146, 10x276 at 2760 MHz, 1.4v, Air Cooled by AMD X2 Heatpipe HSF & Artic Ceramiqe
2x1gb GSkill HZ's, PC4000/DDR500,in DC, CL3-4-4-8, 9/10 divider, 250MHz, 2.5v
BFG 7800GT OC, 425/1050
Seagate Barracuda, SATA II
Dual Boot XP pro & X64
21" Trinitron CRT

 

Re: Can't Put XP on SATA ME TOO!

Hope you don't mind me horning in on your thread toriartist, but I'm having a very similar problem so thought I'd post it here rather than starting another thread.

Building a new system for my girlfriend. Motherboard is a DFI Infinity UltraII-M2, with an AMD Athlon X2 3800+, 1 Gig DDR2 RAM (geIL dual channel -- 2x512), 1 Western Digital 160GB SATA HD, floppy drive, DVD burner. Low end Sapphire PCI-e graphics card.

System fired right up, checked BIOS settings, put in WinXP install CD and everything appeared to go fine but...about 5 or 6 minutes into the install the computer spontaneously reboots without any warning, the CD drive will spin up again and the whole install procedure begins again. This happens after I watch a ton of drivers being loaded, according to messages at the bottom of the screen -- mostly drivers for hardware that is not installed on this system -- e.g. various Adaptec devices, and many other company device drivers. Finally I see stuff about USB, floppy drive, generic stuff and then something about NTFS and at that point the reboot occurs.

The drive light flickers pretty steadily while all this is going on. What strikes me as strange is that this is a new "upgrade" copy of WinXP, but it never asks me to insert my older Win OS CD to verify it before it begins copying all those driver files from the XP disk (but maybe that's supposed to happen later in the process -- can't recall how it went that last time I did an install with an upgrade version. I am, however, doing a clean install with a brand new hard drive -- I know better than to try to install over an older version of the OS).

I thought that maybe the RAID drivers had to be installed, even though I only have one hard drive in this new build so I did install two of the 5 items on the RAID floppy that came with the motherboard (they said "required" in parenthesis after their names) and skipped the remaining three. Clearly the system is able to access the SATA drive and, after encountering the spontaneous reboot problem I was able to use the WD Digital Lifeguard software to zap, repartition and reformat the drive. But then the same problem occured yet again -- spontaneous reboot at exactly the same spot in the installation even though it appeared that everything was going routinely right up until the sudden system reboot.

But several things seem odd to me about how the installation just takes right off: I never see anything asking me to choose whether I want to install FAT32 or the NTFS file system, nor am I asked to make any other choices either. The CD just boots up and says it will begin installing Windows. And the screens look rather plain and dull -- almost like DOS. I purchased this copy of WinXP at Office Max and it does not appear to be counterfeit -- it has the holographic install disk, regular MS box packaging containing large green folder with the instruction installation booklet and serial number sticker on the back and several other folders advertising other MS products -- nothing looks suspicious at all and, as I said, I purchased it at Comp USA (about two months ago and hadn't used it until I attempted to install it on this new system today). It was on sale $100 with a $50 rebate (at least at that time it seemed like a pretty good deal). I'm wondering now if the rebate offer might indicate that MS put out a batch of defective XP install CD's? Anyone heard anything like that? Or have any other ideas about what's up with this installation that keeps going round and round like a dog chasing it's tail???

To make it clear -- this is a clean install of WinXP on a brand new WD SATA hard drive with no other hard drives in the system and nothing to indicate that the drive isn't recognized or having any problems -- no messages indicating any problems with the install or the hard drive until the system reboots without any warning after a bunch of drivers load (almost all of which are for hardware which this new system doesn't have!), drive light flickering pretty steadily as all this occurs and no error messages nor any indication of any problems before the system reboots without any warning at all (I don't see the usual "system will reboot in 15 seconds to continue installation" sort of thing before the reboot happens either). And, oddly, I never get to choose what sort of file system I want to use, nor anything else before the installation begins. System is entirely all brand new hardware right down to the power supply (500 watt Thermaltake) and case and a brand new never used upgrade copy of WinXP.

May try downloading some newer SATA/RAID drivers tomorrow and check out DFI website to see what I can find there about this problem, but thanks for any suggestions anyone has in the meantime.

HELP!!!

 

Windows XP 32bit doesn't install on SATA unless you have drivers for the SATA, windows doesn't see the advanced chipset features untill the 2nd half of the install and SATA is an advanced chipset feature, so install the drivers or get XP 64bit

 

Thanks for that info Candle as that sounds like what may be happening to me.

toriartist (and others who may be having similar problems) -- I found this info in the MS Knowledge base:

"SUMMARY
When you are installing Microsoft Windows XP or Microsoft Windows Server 2003 on a new computer or on a computer that has the latest SCSI or IDE controller technology, you may have to use an OEM device driver to support, for example, a new mass storage controller, to continue with the installation. The symptoms that you have to install an OEM device driver include the following:
• The computer may keep restarting and never start the GUI installation after the text mode Setup is finished.
• The Setup program may stop, and you may receive an error message if the Setup program does not correctly detect the controller.
• If you are booting from the installation floppy disks or CD-ROM disc, you receive the following error message:
Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your system
If you are upgrading by using the Winnt32.exe file, or if you are performing a new installation by using the Winnt.exe file, you receive the following Stop error:
Stop 0x0000007B Inaccessible_boot_device"


The above quotation is from the MS Knowledge Base article at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314859/en-us

While no mention is made of SATA specifically I presume that SATA is considered to be a special type of IDE controller since SATA is Serial ATA (aka IDE). At any rate "The computer may keep restarting and never start the GUI installation after the text mode Setup is finished" sounds exactly like my problem.

Going to see if I can get the SATA/RAID driver thing straightened out and will report back later if I have any luck.

 

toriartist...you making any progress with your SATA/install problems?

Here's an update on my SATA problem. (Actually, it now appears it's not related to SATA, but read on.) Looking at the DFI website (my motherboard manufacturer) I found a clear statement saying that if you're doing a regular non-RAID install you don't need to insert the RAID drivers floppy that comes with the motherboard (i.e. by pressing the F6 key when prompted by Windows to "install oem storage device drivers").

To take the Western Digital SATA drive out of the equation I removed it from the new system and put in an almost brand new Western Digital 80 GB IDE/ATA hard drive that I had only a few days ago installed in an old Compaq (the original drive in that machine was failing). I was able to install a dual boot system (Win98SE and WinXP) on that drive in the Compaq system with no problems.

So I repartitioned that 80 GB IDE/ATA drive, reformatted it and attempted to install my new WinXP purchase on that drive in the new system and....things went exactly as I described above when attempting to install WinXP to the SATA drive...exactly the same. "Text" part of the install went along for 3 or 4 minutes, loading up varioius hardware drivers and then, after some message about NTFS (screen goes blank so quickly I can't read it) the screen turns black and the system spontaneously and abruptly reboots and the whole install routine starts all over again.

So next I again zapped the drive (repartitioned/reformatted) and tried to install my copy of Win98 SE (as I had also previously done with the SATA drive) and that wouldn't complete either. Again, the attempt to install Win98 SE on the IDE/ATA drive went exactly as it had when I attempted to install it to the SATA drive -- I put in the Win98 startup floppy and the Win98 CD-ROM and the install begins and appears to progress normally. But at the point where I see the first really colorful display ("Windows 98" on the background of clouds and blue sky I think it is) the system locked up. Upon doing a soft reboot I see a message saying something like "ntldr not found" or "ntldr not present" or something like that and the system hangs at that point. ntldr is what? NewTech loader...NewTech logical drive...NewTech Licks Dead Rats??? Anyone know?

To summarize...whether I try to install WinXP to a new WD SATA drive or a new WD IDE/ATA drive exactly the same thing happens....system spontaneously reboots about 3 or 4 minutes into the install and the install routine starts all over again. And when I attempt to install Win98 SE to either of the same two drives then something different happens from the WinXP install, but again it's exactly the same with either drive installed in the system -- I get as far in the install as the screen where "Windows 98" appears on a colorful screen and the system hangs....soft reboot shows the message "ntldr not found" or "ntldr missing" or something to that effect and the system hangs at that point.

I only have one of the two drives installed in the case at a time, not both. And I know the IDE/ATA drive is good because I just installed both WinXP Home and Win98 SE on it just two days ago in my old Compaq computer. (And while it was a different copy of WinXP -- the one that came with that system -- that I installed in the old Compaq, it was the same copy of Win98 SE I used for that dual installation in the Compaq and then tried to install in the new system I'm building.) The system POST goes without a hitch and everything in the BIOS aoppears fine and I'm not overclocking anything.

Beginning to think the board is defective. Anyone have any other ideas about what I can try to successfully install WinXP Home on this system? (Only tried installing 98 SE after XP install was no go, to see what would happen.)

One other puzzling observation -- when I was trying to install WinXP yesterday evening on this system the HD access light on the front of the case was flashing as the install proceeded, but noticed that today it wasn't flashing -- even though the text messages onscreen said that various drivers were being loaded.

Argghhhhh!

I have emailed all this info to tech support at DFI, but imagine it will be a couple of days before I hear anything in reply. Any suggestions?

[The lights dim, a loud crash of thunder rolls in as the lightning flashes and the rain pours down and a deep, disembodied voice says...."Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of motherboards!?"]

 

EEZAK: You said you have DDR 2 memory. I assume you misstated that, as AMD processors have never supported DDR 2 until the AM2 processor, and I can't imagine that the system would have ever booted past the post if it was DDR2...

 

Prisoner, my AMD processor is a socket AM2 chip, but I guess I didn't make that clear when I posted my specs. The cpu is an AMD 64 X2 3800+ for socket AM2, so my system memory is indeed DDR2.

 

I had this same issue, when the only thing that was making it poop on me, as far as i could see, was using a 'burner' type cd or dvd drive, i had to use an old x4 cd drive to install Xp pro the first time on my sata's

 

Solved my problem and was able to install WinXP on the new system finally. Problem, apparently, is in the rear USB ports on the new motherboard. Since I searched and couldn't find anything similar described here I wrote it up and started a new thread:

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?p=861387#post861387