Problems reinstalling windows

I am in the process of reinstalling windows xp on my sons Mesh computer.
I have formatted the hdd and booted the xp disc, the installation starts loading files until it asks me to press return if I want to install windows, so far so good.
When I press return the installation tells me that it cant locate any hard drive and then aborts the installation.
On booting the computer gives two messages
1 No drive attached to fastrack controller
2 The bios is not installed

I have sata drivers on floppy, so when the installation stars I press F6 to load drivers from floppy, this is I understand is the proceedure for loading sata drives when reinstalling windows. but the process still stops at the same point even though the insallation seems to load the drivers from the floppy drive

I wonder and hope someone can help as I am going crazy with this task, I have never had a problem like this when formatting my owe=n PC

 

First of all, it may be helpful if we know why you decided to reinstall XP. What sort of problems were you having with this computer before you decided to reinstall XP on it? Are you reinstalling XP to the same drive you were previously using in this computer? It sounds as though you are doing that, but I want to make sure we have the details clear.

How old is the computer? If you're getting a message that the BIOS isn't installed I'm wondering if your CMOS battery might be defective? (Typically they last 5 to 7 years I think.)

How much experience do you have working inside the cases of computers? Be sure to turn off the computer's internal power supply and unplug the power cord from it before opening up the computer case. And also make sure you are careful to discharge any static electricity from yourself before touching anything inside the computer as static electricity can destroy computer chips/integrated circuits. Do you know how to reset your CMOS chip (which holds the BIOS programming)? Try that first and if that doesn't work then you may want to replace the CMOS battery (they only cost a few bucks typically) and then try resetting the CMOS again.

It would be best to find out your computer manufacturer's recommended CMOS reset procedure for the particular motherboard in your computer (try Mesh's support section at their website if they have one).

If you can't find any CMOS/BIOS reset help on the Mesh website, I suggest searching MajorGeeks (or the web) using "reset CMOS" to find generic instructions. Depending on the Mesh computer's motherboard design you may have to move a small jumper (a tiny bridge switch) from one pair of pins to another, leave it for 30 seconds or so, and then move it back; or you may have to remove the CMOS battery (a small round thin battery about the size of a penny) and carefully re-insert it (make sure you note which side of the battery is up before removing it as it must be put back the same way) after 30 or so seconds. There are other methods of resetting a CMOS chip but the two I've described are the most common.

Once you can go into your BIOS and check the settings for your hardware you may want to look at this really long thread I participated in here at MG:

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=150892

I suggest you jump over to page 4 of this 5 page thread (!) and read the posts beginning with the one by Copasta that starts:

"Ok, I'll try to figure this out, because I'm not sure I even know what made the difference, whether one thing, or multiple issues working together. This is the best that I can remember....."

If you don't find anything helpful in that last section of the thread then, if you have the time and patience, you might try working through that entire thread from the beginning looking for and trying the various suggestions I and others made to help Copasta get his SATA drive recognized for the Windows XP installation and then complete the install of XP. He was eventually successful (as you'll read on page 4 of the thread) but it was a long and difficult process.

If you need additional help, let us know what you've tried already and what the results were (note any error messages, even obscure ones; if something you did allowed you to get farther along in the installation before getting stopped again be sure to tell us about that, what you did and exactly how far along in the install you were able to get before it stopped.

 

Thankyou for your very informative post Eesak.
The Mobo is ASUS KV8 Deluxe, and I am trying to install XP on the same drive as the previous windows was on. I have formatted the drive with Acronis and that seems to be ok.
I can access the bios using Delete key on startup, so i can see whats in there, and it does not show any HDD at all. If I can access the bios it must be loaded, yes?
The reason I formatted is the pc had almost come to a halt, running very very slow, and that was the same after I had run a boot up scan with Avast, and believe me Avast showed a load of infections, I felt a new start would be best

 

to jonti007
Welcome to Major Geeks. Folks here can help you.
to Eezak
Where are your manners? lol

 

@ hrlow2 I'm on my meds today.

 

Works for me.:-D

 

Yes, the BIOS is surely present or you wouldn't be able to access it. Have you seen that warning about "no bios installed" only the one time? Are you sure that's what it said (instead of something like "BIOS does not detect any hard drive installed" or similar words)?

Sorry to hear you had a "load of infections...." The malware forum here has several very good malware specialists who often manage to help people successfully clean up even severely infected machines, by the way. But sometimes people do find it easier to just wipe the infected drive and reinstall. Nothing wrong with doing that except....

Sometimes it's not that easy as you now know. I asked about the reason for the reinstall just to be sure there wasn't some other sort of problem that might have indicated defective/failing hardware at the root of your install problem -- but apparently not.

Again, how old is this computer? And did you have WinXP installed on it previously or some other version of Windows? Is the XP installation disk the one that came with your computer?

As far as pressing F6 to let the install know you have a driver floppy, you shouldn't do that until the install routine actually tells you to. Watch for an onscreen message asking if you have such a driver floppy (I think it appears at the very bottom of the screen in a rather small font, so it's easy to miss it). Furthermore, to make it even harder to do things correctly, even when you press F6 to notify the install routine that you have a driver floppy (with the SATA drivers on it) I think it may not ask you to actually insert the disk until sometime later. Most of us, myself included, have at least once assumed in error that either just before or immediately after pressing F6 is the proper time to insert the driver floppy.

I think if you insert it before the install routine actually asks you to, the floppy drive will spin up as usual, but the install routine won't actually read the floppy at that time. So wait until you see the message actually instructing you to insert your driver floppy.

In other words, you need to 1) press F6 when directed to alert the install routine you do have a driver floppy and 2) you should not actually insert the floppy immediately just before or after pressing F6. Rather, wait until the install routine actually tells you to insert your driver floppy.

Very Important: As Copasta found out in that long thread I referenced in my first post to you, at least some (probably all, I imagine) versions of the XP install routine will fail if you press to reboot and continue the Windows installation when directed but don't remove the WinXP installation CD from the drive first. So when you see that "reboot to continue installation" message, first remove the Windows XP installation CD from the drive and only then press the key to reboot and continue the installation.

Or you can leave the CD in the drive, but as soon as the computer reboots, you can press Delete to enter the BIOS and change the boot order settings so the CD drive is no longer ahead of your hard drive in the boot priority sequence. In other words, you now want to set the drive you're installing XP to as the first boot device. Before the installation will continue properly the install hard drive must come before your CD drive in the BIOS boot sequence.

Once you've made that BIOS change press F10 and confirm that you wish to save your changes to the BIOS and exit. The computer should reboot again with the new settings in effect and the installation should continue. You must either remove the CD from the drive or change the drive boot sequence in the BIOS otherwise the computer reboots and starts the Windows installation all over again from the beginning!

Let us know if these suggestions work. And if the installation hangs farther along due to some other problem tell us what's happening now.

Good luck!

 

I have studied all the posts in detail and inwardly digested them.
Then I proceeded with caution and to detail and I have now loaded windows on to my sons computer.
I am not sure exactly what I did right but it has worked and now I am off on holiday for a week feeling quite good.
Thanks to you all for your help

 

Glad to hear you were successful. Enjoy your holiday! We look forward to seeing you here at MajorGeeks again if and when you need more assistance. Or just come back to look around and see what's going on in the various forums.

 

Looks like your meds helped out. Way to go.:-D:wave