Having trouble installing Win2K or XP on a SATA or RAID drive?

[BipolarBill]

Ah, the joys or 3rd-party storage controllers!

1. If installing RAID, create your array. If you are using non-RAID SATA, move to step 2.

2. This is very important. Set the boot sequence to favor the drive or array. Set it as Floppy, CDROM, SCSI or Floppy, CDROM, BBS-0. BBS is the term given to some RAID arrays and SATA drives, depending on the BIOS.

3. Boot from the Windows CD. When setup begins, look for a cue at the bottom of the screen which says "Press F6 to load 3rd-party storage drivers" or similar. Press F6 now and have your RAID/SATA drivers ready on a floppy disk. If your motherboard did not come with a floppy, download the drivers from your motherboard maker's web site and unzip them to a floppy.

4. The prompt for the drivers will come. Be sure that the floppy is in and just press Enter. Now select the driver for your version of Windows and press Enter again.

4. Keep the floppy in the drive, but not inserted all of the way. You may be prompted for it later.

That should do it. ;)

[rankar7]

If for some reason you get stuck on step 4 above (the first step 4), where Windows keeps prompting you for the drivers and you have your floppy in the drive or a CD-ROM loaded but it doesn't seem to be reading it, hit ESC to skip over the file.

Windows will continue its installation and will later display the files that it cannot find. Note these files while you skip over them.

Windows will restart the computer after it's done with this series of installing system files. When it restarts, insert a bootable diskette that will bring you to a DOS prompt.

When you get to the prompt, re-insert your RAID drivers diskette and copy the driver files to C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS (assuming a Win2000 installation).

Reboot.

That should do it.

[fishybawb]

If you're using a SATA drive as the primary, but have a second hard disk installed as a master on the IDE channel, disconnect the IDE cable from the secondary drive before you install Windows. XP gives me a "Cannot find suitable partition" error when instructed to install Windows on the SATA drive otherwise. Obviously you can reconnect the drive after Setup has completed :)

[MalRic]

Thanks for the heads up, I am going to build a system using SATA HD for the first time and this info may prove very useful.:cool:

[cRuNcHiE]

Problem i had with wanting to give SATA boot priority over IDE was this.

Motherboar A7n8x deluxe, bios 1007

I installed XP without the IDE drives connected so that it would make the SATA drive c:,This would then also boot up fine.

The problem was that when i reconnected the IDE drives, even though the bios says boot sequence is floppy,crom,scsi it would then always boot the IDE drive instead?!!?

only way around this i found was to goto the bios again and in the hard-drive detection bit choose NONE for ide primary/secondary etc where i had IDE drives installed.

The drives are still available in windows and it now happily boots from the SATA with the ide drives connected!

[tantone]

I have an Asus P4C800-E Deluxe and an SATA drive installed (non-RAID) which is where everything is stored. I never had to install any 3rd-party drivers during the XP setup.

[jawaligt]

So true. I spent two weeks figuring that out :p

[poly4life]

I also have a P4C800-E deluxe. However, I cannot find any SATA controller drivers on the Asus website. I only see Promise ATA and RAID controller drivers. Since you two both have this board, then let me tell you what I'm having trouble with.

MY 250.0 GB Western Digital SATA HDD uses a SecureConnect cable, so that I use the SATA power and cable connectors and not the legacy power connector. In the BIOS, it sees the HDD as 250.0GB using LBA, which is all good, right? But what is odd is that the HDD is viewed as the third IDE master device. The Primary IDE Master and Slave devices are for my Sony and Plextor DVD drives, in that order.

This SATA HDD should at least be viewed as a SCSI, if not a SATA device in the BIOS, right? So, that's the first anomoly I noticed.

The second anomoly (I think that's the right spelling) is I cannot fdisk this SATA drive. When I tried it last time, the primary Dos partition came up as 41 MBs!

Basically, this is what I want: I only have one HDD in this computer, for now. I want to boot off this SATA HDD each and every time, of course. Obviously, I need for this drive to be designated as the C drive, so that's the other requirement I need.
I've seen people suggest that you can insert the Windows CD, press F6, and it'll check for third party storage devices, in which case you insert a CD or floppy for your SATA controller drivers. I already went over that I cannot locate any on the Asus website.

And I'm not sure - I could be dead wrong here - how installing Windows XP (or another variant of Windows) will take care of the problem of partitioining and formating the SATA HDD. Please, any assistance would be appreciated. I don't feel like paying 15 bucks for something I have done in error.

[poly4life]

Oh, almost forgot, my boot order in the CMOS configuartion is Floppy, CD, and my HDD. Thanks again for any help.

[poly4life]

Sorry, hopefully this the last edit for my first post, instead of 41MBs when I used fdisk in my Windows 98 bootup disk, the partitin size was approximately 41GBs!

Thanks

[BipolarBill]

You should really have started your own thread.

Boot order should be Floppy, CDROM and SCSI or BBS-0.

You press F6 during Setup in order to let Setup know that you have a 3rd-party controller. Windows doesn't "search" for anything. You have to spoon-feed it.

After the legal agreement, you will be asked where you want to install Windows. Right then and there, you can create, destroy and format partitions. Read the screen.

Your SATA controller is a Promise SATA controller. It says so in your manual. You use the same drivers. SATA must be enabled in BIOS setup.

Once more, if you want to boot from the SATA drive, you must leave HDD out of the BIOS sequence. Please read this sticky again.

[poly4life]

first, let me say thank you. I think I undersatnd what your saying, here. First, my boot order was as you said. The problem is if I install Windows XP (I found it windows 98 is a little more work), you say press F6 for third party controller, and I have to spoon feed it. And I said that I cannot download these SATA drivers from Asus website, but I did see SATA controller drivers at the Western Digital one. Are you saying that the Promise SATA drivers are on my Asus CD? (which doesnt' seem to work properly, but that's another story entirely).

As far as booting from it, so I can fully comprehend what your saying and we are on the same wavelength here, I should make The BIOS believe that I don't have an SATA HDD, even though it lists as an ide device. Again, it's my ony HDD. And the BIOS does indeed recognize the hard drive as 250.0 GB.

[BipolarBill]

http://www.asus.com/support/download/selectftp.aspx?l1_id=1&l2_id=15&l3_id=20&m_id=3&f_name=378raid_100137.zip~zaqwedc

Unzip that and use the MAKEDISK tool to make your floppy.

Do not use the blue PATA connector next to the SATA ports. Use the blue and black ones up top only.

Read pages 2-21 thru 2-26 in your manual.

Read pages 4-10 thru 4-12 in your manual.

Read the whole Promise manual.

[poly4life]

Thank you. It worked fine. I haven't gotten to the process of setting the SATA HDD to be the boot drive, though, because I ran into another faus pas, sorta. See, when I attempt to install Windows XP Pro, clean, at the point it's copying setup files, I think, it tells me it cannot locate the file advapi32.dll. I can no longer continue the installation at this point, for this file is critical in the installation process; I can't just skip over it. My question is this: Where is this file SUPPOSED to be located on my XP CD? I know it's in the Windows/System32 folder after all is set-and-done.

[BipolarBill]

That's an Outook Express file. Just update Internet Explorer later.

[poly4life]

Hey, outlook express file, huh? Hmm, well unfortunately - with all due respect - that peice of information is irrevelent at this juncture. I have nothing installed on my HDD. When I try to do a fresh install, and when Windows XP copies the setup files to my HDD, it tells me that advapi32.dll is not on the CD. Unfortunately, I cannot continue the installation without it. For some reason, it won't let me continue when I say skip this file. I'm trying find out where this advapi32.dll should be located on the CD; that is, I don't have the file on my CD.

Thanks.

[BipolarBill]

With all due respect, this thread is not about missing or corrupt files. Please start a new thread.

If I were you, I would either clean that CD, polish it or replace it. If you want more detail, I'll add some suggestions in your new thread.

[stix_kua]

Thanks a bunch Bill...

[dajogejr]

BP...this is a great thread...minus the sidebars.

How come you don't sticky it?

With SATA becoming more and more of a norm, I think we all forsee more OS installs on the SATA drive.

One of the biggest changes from BIOS 1007 to 1008 on my asus was to include the word SATA in my boot choices.
Before, it was SCSI, which...I can see where it would get confusing.

Now labeled as SATA/SCSI in boot order choices....nice touch....