Need SATA drivers

Hi there,

I am trying to reinstall Windows XP on my husband's computer following an accidental download of a virus/spyware (can't be bothered trying to disinfect as I was going to do a reinstall soon anyway). I have an original XP disc (an old upgrade version with SP1, but I have a copy of 98 to validate it) and I want to format the C: partition and reinstall there. The hard drive also has two more partitions where data is stored. The drive is a Hitachi 500GB SATA.

My problem occurs shortly after inserting the Win98 disc as verification, when the WinXP installation indicates the partition to install to, which it's only showing as C: Partition1 [Unknown] and that the size is 131072 MB. The other two partitions on that disk are not showing up. I don't want to go ahead and format that, in case it affects the whole drive and not just the C: partition. In Computer Management the drive shows the three partitions and the correct size of each and the whole drive.

I subsequently realised that I need to install the SATA drivers when prompted during the file-copying phase of installation, but I do not know which drivers I need. I have read all about slipstreaming, but the computer does have a floppy drive so I am happy to do it that way, as long as I can find the correct drivers to use. I cannot find any original disk that I might have used when installing this drive a year or so ago, so I can't remember the exact procedure I followed! :-o

The motherboard is a Foxconn 661FX7MJ-RSH and I do have the driver disc that came with it, but I simply cannot decipher where the driver is on that disc in order to transfer it to the floppy. I have also been to the Foxconn site and downloaded some drivers, but they appear to be the same as those on the CD.

Can I simply insert the motherboard CD when prompted by the Windows installation?

I have been into the BIOS and cannot see where SATA can be enabled or disabled, but the hard drive is being correctly registered there anyway.

Thanks for any help that can be given.

 

Those drivers on your CD would probably be in a folder called RAID. You cannot insert a CD in XP to get the drivers. That only works with Vista and Win7.

 

For your reference, here is the page for your motherboard.

http://www.foxconnchannel.com/product/Motherboards/detail_spec.aspx?ID=en-us0000162


Serial ATA is mentioned on page 37 of the manual. You can find in the the BIOS under Integrated Peripherals>SIS onchip IDE device.

 

Thanks tgell.

I had already had a look at the Foxconn site and downloaded the drivers I thought I needed to make the required floppy disk, but the problem was that I couldn't work out which folder the required file(s) were in. I had also checked the manual, which was on the motherboard CD, and couldn't really fathom out what to do.

That information on page 37 that you mention appears to be referring to the SIS onchip PCI device menu, not the onchip IDE device as stated. The two SATA entries on that page are set as follows:
SiS Serial ATA Controller is set to [Enabled]
SiS Serial ATA Mode [IDE]

Confusingly, the manual for my ASRock motherboard says that if you are not setting up a RAID function then you don't need the driver floppy and neither do you need to make any changes in the BIOS. Again, I installed this drive some time ago and can't remember what I did during the installation of WinXP.

Anyway, another twist - this morning I thought I'd try the CD in my computer to read the contents of the disc and my system obviously recognised it as not being compatible with my computer, but on the main splash-page, instead of the list of contents there was an option to make a SATA floppy! So that's what I've now done.

I am about to start again to reinstall XP, and I hope I will be able to see all the partitions, and their correct sizes. I don't want to format the partitions that contain the data, even though they are backed up elsewhere. The confusing part was that the XP installation screen registered the C: partition as 128GB, when in fact the C: partition is set to 50GB out of the 500GB drive total.

I do not remember it being as complicated as this when I first installed the drive, but then again it was a fresh blank drive and I didn't have to worry about data.

 

Another problem!

I pressed F6 when prompted and more files continued to load until I got a page where I had to press S to load the extra drivers. I then got an error message that: The file txtsetup.oem could not be found. I had to exit out of that screen and continued on to the screen where it was only detecting a C: partition of 128GB.

I checked the floppy and the file in question is definitely there.

Back to square one!!

 

Greetings, Digibirder.

Just a couple of quick tries:

You might visit the Hitachi downloads page for your drive - don't know if it will offer anything (sometimes drive OEMs have diskette creation tools), but it's worth a shot.

Also, you might check the 'txtsetup.oem' file (and the others on the floppy, for that matter), make sure it's not 'read-only'.

 

Caliban, thanks for your reply.

I have had a look at the Hitachi site, and there are several tools available. I will study those in more detail.

In the meantime, your suggestion about the files being read only was spot-on! I will try the installation again, but at the moment my husband is performing a major backup of everything important on his drive, in case I need to format the whole thing and start again from scratch, rather than trying to preserve the data partitions.

 

Hello,
You are right about the SIS onchip PCI device menu. Sorry about that. What I do not understand is if you are in SATA IDE mode as stated, why is a RAID driver needed. After looking at the manual, it appears you do not have SATA AHCI Mode which would be used for a single drive. You need XP drivers for SATA AHCI Mode and Raid Mode but for SATA IDE mode it would seem to me that the drivers are not required. Maybe somebody here can confirm this.

 

Hi tgell,

After more searching, I wondered why I needed the RAID driver, but thought that was why I was getting the 128GB limit showing.

I've also discovered that I don't have a AHCI mode so assumed that I should be OK in IDE mode, but no...

I just want the full 500GB capacity to show, and the partitions to be preserved while I format and reinstall on the C: partition.

I feel a total system upgrade coming on!!

 

Still no joy.

When I disable the read-only on the floppy, it simply re-sets itself and therefore this still is not working.

Also, the disk tools on the Hitachi site look useful but I don't think any can help me. The only one that looks useful to my situation is one called Device Capacity. For older motherboards that don't recognise larger capacity drives, I can set the drive to temporarily read as 128GB and then this will re-set to normal capacity on next boot-up. This is OK, but it still doesn't address what will happen to the other partitions on the drive. I guess this will just format the whole drive, but I really don't know what effect it is going to have on the data.

I have to do other things now, so I will have to return to this task at a later time.

 

Just another thought on this. The XP disc that I am trying to reinstall is an old one (and it is genuine) and only comes with SP1 integrated. The computer has been updated to SP3 via the normal updates.

Could it be that I can't see the whole capacity of the drive be related to the fact that the installation disc only has SP1?

Do I need to do the slipstreaming thing to get a disc with SP3?

I don't want to use the tool mentioned above as I would ideally prefer to be able to see existing partitions and then delete and reformat only the C: partition, which is only 50GB.

I'm not doing anything with it at the moment, as I'm waiting on further instructions in the Malware forum. I've decided to first have a go at removing whatever has taken hold.

All good fun! I am still trying to figure out how I installed the drive in the first place!!

 

The SP3 thing is possible, I guess. I have been told by some 'puter shop techs that some hardware must have XP SP3 or above in order to function correctly, although I've never run into that problem.
It would be nice to have the SP3 slipstreamed with XP anyway, for future usage even if it's not the immediate fix.
Were you able to pull all of the important data from the hidden partitions?

 

I haven't done anything with it yet - still waiting on the results of the malware logs I posted yesterday.

When booted into Windows all the partitions, and full size of the drive is visble, so my husband has taken off all important data, so I can, theoretically format the whole drive and not worry about the data partitions, but the basic problem still remains that the XP installation will not see the whole 500GB.

I'm trawling the hard drive and motherboard manufacturers' sites at the moment, hoping to glean some inspiration as to what I need to do. But I am in the process of trying to fix the virus issue at the moment, so I don't want to mess that up. I don't know whether that's part of the problem or not.

 

Agreed. Better make sure the thing's squeaky clean before trying to tweak it.
Good luck - keep us posted.

 

Just a thought. Since you have the XP install disc, you could get into the recovery console and use the diskpart command to see all of the partitions on the disk that are recognized and get detailed information about each. If you see all partitions you might be able to trace down what is going on.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300415/en-us#

 

Thanks, tgell. Hadn't thought of that option. Although I haven't ever had cause to use it so I don't really know what it will do. I know the partitions are there as they can be seen in Windows - it's just on this booting into the Windows CD and trying to reinstall that it's only showing 128GB.