First off I need a laptop with a Firewire port, second I can't us an O/S newer than Win2000, 2003 Server, Win XP but with a maximum of SP2, SP3 will load but it will not work on my program. I recently installed an SSID 128 GB Crucial H.D., my Motherboard BIOS recognized the SATA drive, DVD writer and legacy USB enabled. The BIOS does not have the ability to engage or disable Native SATA.
When I try to install W2k or XP Pro using an "external floppy drive" USB with the INTEL SATA DRIVER files on the floppy , hitting F6 on the installation setup the O/S displays a menu stating that if I needed to load another driver from the floppy hit "S". I choose the SATA driver file I need and I can hear it load the file. At that point it gives the choice of loading another file or to continue hit ENTER. I hit enter and it starts to load the Windows files but after a bit a menu is displayed telling me to hit "enter" to enable the "A" drive (floppy) but it can't find the "A" drive to load so the installation stops. I've done this over and over but the same bottleneck, can't find the floppy drive. It obviously found "A" when I did the F6 on load but can't find it later to complete the install. I suspect the PC does not recognize the USB Legacy port so of course no "A" drive. I enabled USB Legacy in the BIOS. It does this on 2 H.P. laptops so I don't think it's an isolated problem.