Bios on NF7-S V2 does not see SATA drives

[TCMGO]

I am rebuilding my computer that uses an Abit NF7-S V2 mobo. This computer worked great until recently when the Promise Raid card died, causing an irreparable “fatal error” in the MBR of the XP operating system drive, so I am starting over with fresh drives. Here’s my problem: the bios on the mobo does not see my two SATA drives that are plugged into the onboard SATA plug-ins. It sees IDE drives just fine, but not SATA drives. When first booting up the two SATA drives do show up in the posting dialogue under Silicon Image RAID where it then states: “no valid device.”

But when I go into the bios, they are not there, and when I boot with the windows XP CD to install it, it soon hits a screen that says that there are no hard drives, confirming what I see in bios. I have tried a number of suggested bios settings that I have found in googling the problem, but I get the same result. I even installed a PCI serial ATA host card (Silicon Image sil 3114) and plugged them in on it and the same thing happens. I am at wit’s end trying to figure this one out. Any insights or experience with this mobo?

[ABIT Sean]

You will need the sil3112/3114 driver on a floppy disk and press F6 at the start of the XP install in order for it to see the hard drive.

Also if I remember correctly the drives will not show up in bios because the sil3112 is addon card. They will be displayed on the second post screen.

I hope this helps.

[TCMGO]

Yes, your answer is helpful, but I am still confused.

I believe the SATA drive I am using to load Windows XP on is SATA1 drive, as it worked just fine on this computer until the crash.

When I hit F6 during XP install, it moves along to a point where it says there are no hard drives and the install will be aborted. Somewhere I am missing when to load the drivers. At what point and how do I load the drivers which Windows needs to see the SATA drive?

I was able to load XP on an IDE drive and when in Windows it sees the formatted SATA drive in explorer. How do I load the windows OS to it when the boot drive is the IDE drive that has windows loaded on it? I don't think it is possible, is it?

[ABIT Sean]

This article may help you http://www.alexnolan.net/articles/installxpsata.htm

[bledd]

Nice and easy way to do it..

If you don't have a floppy drive

Copy your XP disc to C:\XPCD\ on your pc.

Run this on it..

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/8584...reamer-x86x64/

Then use nlite (don't select any other removal options etc) to rebuild the ISO

Burn ISO to disc

Now your XP disc will contain almost all SATA/raid drivers



It's a bit of a shotgun blast approach, you could just use nlite to slipstream the 3112 driver, but might as well make a full disc

[ABIT Sean]

Nice and easy way to do it..

If you don't have a floppy drive

Copy your XP disc to C:\XPCD\ on your pc.

Run this on it..

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/8584...reamer-x86x64/

Then use nlite (don't select any other removal options etc) to rebuild the ISO

Burn ISO to disc

Now your XP disc will contain almost all SATA/raid drivers



It's a bit of a shotgun blast approach, you could just use nlite to slipstream the 3112 driver, but might as well make a full disc

I would recommend this method also. Its a very easy tried and tested way of installing sata/raid controllers. As like most people I know longer own a floppy drive.