Windows XP - Installing to SATA _WITHOUT_ a Floppy Disk

[SHare]

Is it a sataII drive on a Sata I controller? If so you'll need to apply the appropriate jumper settings.

[nichomach]

Originally Posted by RobGreen

Hi, First of all, many thanks for this thread as it has really helped me out....

Could I please just ask if anyone can help me with a small issue I am having, I have followed all instructions to the letter, but I just cannot get the SATA Drive auto detected at all! The drivers are on my CD successfully (if you try and load the drivers from F6 + Floppy it says that Windows already has the driver, and you can see it flash by when setup is loading files) but it will just not detect the drive. The only way I have got this driver working at all actually is to turn the OEMPREINSTALL off, but then obviously the auto detect doesn't work.

Does anyone have any ideas of something I may have missed?
It's an Intel Mobile 965 Chipset driver BTW.

Thanks
Rob

Yep, had this issue with some Dell Latitudes recently - if you can, flip the SATA controller in the BIOS from AHCI to ATA mode.

[RobGreen]

Is it a sataII drive on a Sata I controller? If so you'll need to apply the appropriate jumper settings.

Thank you for your reply.

I don't think it is a physical problem here, it's a laptop HD, and I have been able to detect it using the F6 driver load, and with OEMPREINSTALL turned off. The HD itself is fine.

Yep, had this issue with some Dell Latitudes recently - if you can, flip the SATA controller in the BIOS from AHCI to ATA mode.

Will give that a bash, thanks

[RobGreen]

Hi there,

Tried switching that, but can't do it I'm afraid.
I have also been trying to do this using the textsetup.oem and massstoragedrivers in winnt.sif.
Not working that way either!

This is getting to be a nightmare.....

[kurbads]

Spoiled few CDs while getting everything exactly as said in you guide, [R4A]Bigman.
I took *.sys and *.inf files from SATA floppy downloadable at Asrock home page.
Substituted the lines from viamraid.inf where necessary:

Viamraid.sys
%PCI\VEN_1106&DEV_3249.DeviceDesc% = viamraid , PCI\VEN_1106&DEV_3249
%PCI\VEN_1106&DEV_3149.DeviceDesc% = viamraid , PCI\VEN_1106&DEV_3149
%PCI\VEN_1106&DEV_3164.DeviceDesc% = viamraid , PCI\VEN_1106&DEV_3164
VIA VT6421 RAID Controller

First disk spoiled because I did not copy the first square bracket to Winnt.sif file.
Second was, I forgot to put Viamraid.sys in i386 directory.
Third coaster was because I left line in [SCSI.LOAD] section without ",4" part.
Forth CD finally WORKED

I used XP installation with integrated SP2.

The next step would be to integrate drivers into CMDCONS.

[DJMatty]

Originally Posted by directhex

seems like a lot of hard work to me. none of this faffing about with an easy os like linux

Yeah right... you try installing Feisty on a raid set on an nvidia 680i chipset mobo... lol

I spent ages trying to get it to work and finally gave up and just installed it on a single SATA drive that was in my machine as well.

When they put a version of dmraid into the live cd and actually get gparted to work with it, that's when it'll be easy!

Matt

[peterb]

There is another way...

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...roductID=43836

[DJMatty]

lol

yeah there is that

The other alternative would be to use a usb floppy, while this is restricted to mobo's that support usb through the bios, thats most of em nowadays...

Matt

Originally Posted by peterb

There is another way...

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...roductID=43836

[Gunwitch]

Pardon the intrusion but i saw the title and thought wtf!

I have a sata II hard drive and when i first built the system it was fine. I'm now getting a new rig and going to chuck on vista premium.

Now reading this thread has got me worried. I was under the impression i could just connect everything up and install vista or xp with no problems, but this thread has me confused.

Have i missed something i should of done or should do?

Yes i'm thick

[DJMatty]

It does depend on motherboards, chipsets etc, but if you are getting new kit I would think you would be fine.

I have recently installed vista on my nvidia 680i mobo onto a raid pair of sata drives, no floppy disks needed, no sata drivers required. Vista installer picked up the raid array and installed straight to it.

XP might be different, but if you have a floppy in your rig it's a simple case of F6 in the installer, stick in the floppy for the sata drivers and away you go. However this thread is for peeps that don't have a floppy drive in their machine and it's a way of building an XP install disc that contains all the necessary files to boot the installer and have it see the sata drives without needing to F6 and use a floppy.

Matt

[Gunwitch]

Ah i se.

Thanks for clearing that up much appreciated.
It will be a vista build i'm doing so should be easy. And i appear to of gotten rid of my floppy a while ago.

But thanks again.

[ozzysnack]

I have followed steps 1 through 3 completely and had no troubles. But the links provided for the bootfiles in step 4 are invalid. Where might I find these files? I've googled a bit and looked around the site the link takes me to, but I can't find anything.

Help appreciated.

[aidanjt]

Use nLite, it takes the hassle away.

[baalpeteor]

Originally Posted by Lee @ SCAN

cheers !!!! your a star
Guess who's making a XP SP1 disc tonight with integrated SATA drivers

<Not the best first post mate - even talking about warez is strictly forbidden on here. We prefer to pay people for their work - Agent>

<yes its a great post that's why it got deleted =D. You know you gotsta hide the good info.. cant let people know da truth ya feel?. Oh and about warez.. didn't i say I downloaded it? You must think its illegal.. jumpin to conlusions.. that's alright all the mods everywhere do... but i have an offsite ftp server that has a copy of basically all windows i've ever brought (ALL LEGIT) in iso format and I keep them in torrents tho b/c its faster than ftp and more reliable in resuming a download.. so yes you shouldn't even have touched my post ... but its ok. - Baalpeteor , Computer Network Specialist>

[RobGreen]

Hi,

I managed to solve my problem if anyone is interested

Basically after a LOT of searching I came across this link (apologies for not being able to link it properly- need 5 posts - the x's are w's) hxxp://xxx.windowsserverx64.com/CSK/technical_articles/hardware/56.aspx which descirbes in detail what all the stuff in txtsetup.sif does.

From careful reading of the bit about [sourcedisksfiles] i noticed that the string "si3112r.sys = 1,,,,,,_x,4,1" or in my case "iastor.sys = 1,,,,,,_x,4,1" is actually trying to load drivers from a directory on the root of the XP cd called AMD64.

Try creating this directory with your SATA drivers files in it, and see if that works.
It might also be worth adding you driver .inf file under SOURCEDISKSFILES with the string 1,,,,,,,20,0,0 after it e.g "iastor.inf = 1,,,,,,,20,0,0"

Finally, I have found that it's good to make sure all the cases in your diver files match- My disk wasn't working until I made ALL entries that use the words iaStor.sys into iastor.sys (as the actual driver file had no capital 's')

I hope this can help someone!

[Minty369]

Hi All

For the past week I tried this approach to get XP to recognise a SATA HDD, without success. This morning: Eureka!!! I simply went into the BIOS and disabled the IDE channel. XP then immeiately installed successfully. Hope this is of use to someone.