SATA Drive Installation Problem - HELP!

studiomga

Just built this system (my first build)…..

Asus A7N8X Deluxe
AMD Athlon XP 2500 + Barton
Corsair 2 x 512 MB RAM
2 x Maxtor SATA/150 80GB 7200 RPM 8MB
Asus CDRW
Samsung DVD drive
Enermax PSU 431W

Having trouble installing MS Windows XP PRO – it doesn’t detect my SATA Hard Drives to install onto.

I’ve gone into BIOS and it also doesn’t seem to have detected them there either. It has detected the following:

Primary Master : Samsung DVD
Primary Slave: None
Secondary Master: None
Secondary Slave: Asus CDRW

Do I have to manually detect the SATA drives? I know the motherboard has recognised them, as they are listed with the rest of components on start up. Should my Primary Master / Slave be my hard drives and Secondary Master / Slave be my CD Drives

Hope somebody can help me…….. Thanks in advance!

Also the system has detected my processor as an 1100xp (not 2500xp)….. do I have to manually configure this in BIOS aswell?

Kali

First of all your system should be reporting your cpu speed correctly.. theres a problem there somewhere...

If you've an NForce2 motherboard then make sure the ram is in slots 1 and 3 not 1 and 2 (i've made this mistake a fair few times myself).

If not, the CPU FSB should be set to 166Mhz in the BIOS (this should be automatic anyway, but may require a jumper setting on the motherboard if its slightly older).

Sleipnir

Your main hard drive should be on the primary master.
Detach all the other devices.
Attach one hard drive to P.M.
Boot up and see if the BIOS sees it.

SouperComputer

most mobos have a separate SATA controller which will not be visible in BIOS.

you may need a driver disk for your SATA controller, whan you startup the XP setup disk, press F6 when is asks if you need to install additional HD drivers.

It will ask you for the disk later on, and you can choose the driver you need from the floppy.

happy days

moridin

It might be an idea to list the primary boot hard disk thing in the BIOS as SCSI too, that should make it boot off the S-ATA drive when it's all installed

astrofool

soupercomputer is exactly right.

hit f6 when it asks if u want to install any other drivers at the very beginning of the setup process. You should have got the disk with the motherboard, if not head over to www.asus.com.tw to make the disk yourself

studiomga

Thanks for all the help..... I'll give those ideas a go tonight

aodh_rua

Originally posted by SouperComputer
you may need a driver disk for your SATA controller, whan you startup the XP setup disk, press F6 when is asks if you need to install additional HD drivers.

It will ask you for the disk later on, and you can choose the driver you need from the floppy.

I have the nForce chipset and that's what I had to do. Hit F6 when it asks if you need to install addtional third-party SCSI controllers and then select the floppy with the S-ATA drivers.