Andalu

@Dietmar strange... I see that window only when both keys are set on "0" (search enabled):

It can be disabled via regedit. Under the key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\DriverSearching set on 1 DontPromptForWindowsUpdate and DontSearchWindowsUpdate

Thanks @Dave-H for the clarification. The v2.0.3.1 is not wrong but it is the only working version for all intel sata controllers. For asmedia ones you can install the most updated versions. The latest working version for the ASM1061 chipset is the asahci32.sys v3.2.0. Regarding bootable drives, I think there is no one-size-fits-all behavior: it can be affected by several variables such as bios and firmware.

@Dave-H Hi, I'm glad to know that you got the asmedia card and were able to find a way to install it in your system Just to get a better understanding: 1) is your 3TB GPT disk included in the USB3 box recognized correctly in XP when connected to the asmedia card via eSATA cable? 2) are you sure the version of the asahci32.sys driver you installed is 2.0.4? I only have the asstor32.sys driver v2.0.4 but it doesn't allow GPT disk recognition on my systems. What version do you have installed? For the asmedia card similar to yours even the most updated driver asahci32.sys v3.2.0 can be installed. It can be found at station-drivers.com (the driver package is ASM106x 3.3.2.0). I have tried connecting a dvd-rom drive to the internal sata port of the above card and it shows up in the systray as a removable drive with both the asahci32.sys driver v2.0.3.2 and v3.2.0 so this seems to be a characteristic of every asmedia driver. The same dvd-rom drive however is regularly detected as a boot drive in the bios of my asus Z790 board but other boot drives however were not detected as such on another motherboard (MSI Z590) so the behavior may change from board to board.

It is not that one. I had pointed it out to you but you prefer Startech products and unfortunately it is not listed on their site.

My card is just that, I paid 15.12€ on amazon.it and it doesn't have the small bracket. But the board I prefer is the one with the two external eSATAp ports mentioned some posts ago. I got it because of the boot selector in the hope that it would allow you to boot directly from it. This did not work on the MSI 590 but on the Asus Z790 it works fine. I installed the XP ISO on the SSD connected to the ASMedia card via eSATAp cable and now I can choose to boot XP from the external disk as if it were a USB drive. As shown in the image below the Intel sata controller drivers were not even installed: I think it is certainly a very handy solution: boot from external SSD with GPT disk recognition. However, its cost is almost twice as much as the first mentioned card (it costs less on aliexpress but you have to wait a month or so to get it) to which one must also add that of the eSATAp cable (about 8€).

Fixed, thanks!

@SEDANEH Hi, no problem here on the Asus Prime Z790-P WIFI D4 board:

You are welcome! The board is the one in the link, although it is not the cheapest. It is a bit different from mine, which has the two internal sata ports on the top, but the chipset is the same. Even for the Startech card you need to configure jumpers. Hopefully, everything will go smoothly

Thank you for the report. So far I have not encountered similar problems when copying a large amount of data, but a problem can always occur as I reported a few posts ago. At the moment there are not many alternatives to ASM10xx cards for @Dave-H (unless he intends to try the asahci32 driver for the intel controller, but he has already commented on this). In any case, to have the ability to access a GPT disk in XP, I think a compromise can also be found.

I tried some ASMedia eSATA cards with the asahci32.sys v2.0.3.2 driver installed: - ASM1061: correct recognition of GTP disks, safe disk removal feature working; - ASM1064: correct recognition of GTP disks, safe disk removal feature not working; - ASM1166: no recognition of GPT disks. The asahci32.sys driver works also for a card with the JMicron JMB585 chipset : correct recognition of GTP disks but safe disk removal feature not working. The ASM1061 card is the one I prefer. You might choose one like this: although it has 2 external eSATA ports + 2 internal sata ports, only two of them can be used simultaneously (jumpers must be set): a) two external eSATA ports b) one external eSATA port and one internal sata port c) two internal sata ports. Or you could choose another card like this one, with two external eSATAp ports: to its eSATAp (Power on eSATA) ports you can connect the normal eSATA cable (suitable for 2,5" HDD/SSD drives) and the eSATAp cable with 5v and 12v voltage (suitable for 3,5" HDD drives) like this: You can connect your 3TB GPT drive to the eSATAp port even without its USB3 enclosure. For the first card mentioned, it is also possible to connect a 3,5" HDD, but in this case the drive must be connected to the eSATAp port of the followed adapter, which in turn is connected to the sata port of the ASMedia board:

A few days ago I noticed a strange behavior on two different systems with XP installed, copying many files (the total amount of data was about 2TB) from an external USB3 drive to an empty 8TB GPT HDD connected to the eSATAp port of an Asmedia card with the driver asahci32.sys v2.0.3.2 installed. The copying continued smoothly until about 1.5 TB, when it slowed down and then stopped almost completely. I was forced to block it. From this moment I could no longer access the files just copied. After disconnecting the disk via the safe removal feature and then reconnecting, in Disk Management the drive was detected as RAW, in Windows Explorer I was prompted to format the drive: After reformatting the disk in Win10 and initializing it as GPT, I repeated the copy operation in XP but again the same issue occurred: the copy operation blocked after about 1 TB of copied data and the disk was no longer accessible. I tried again to use another 3TB HDD formatted and initialized as GPT using a boot disk from a disk management software, but again I had to find that in XP the disk was no longer detected after copying about 1.25 TB files to it. I have two other different models of 4 TB GPT hard drives into which I had started copying files some time ago by using Win10. Later, after discovering that the asahci32.sys driver allowed GPT disks to be recognized even in XP, I started copying files only using this OS without encountering any problems. Here an image ot the two disk (the total data for each is nearly 3TB, the files copied under XP are almost 500GB): So I thought I would also repeat the same procedure with the disks that had given problems: for the 3TB disk, I first copied about 460GB of data in Win10 and then continued the copy in XP until it reached 1.51TB: copy completed without issues. I repeated the same procedure with the 8TB GPT disk, but this time the files copied in Win10 were smaller in number and size (4GB) while another 1.70TB of data I copied from XP and again this time did not detect any more problems. Both disks connected and disconnected several times are always detected in XP as GPT. Also tried in two different systems and with 3 different sata controllers (driver is always the same, asahci32.sys v2.0.3.2), same result. Below is an image of the two disks as they are now detected: Thus, to use a GPT disk in XP, it seems to be necessary to first copy some files to it under Win10. Below is the information detected in Win10 for all the disks mentioned above (all the disks seem to have the same specifications): Of course I will continue to copy the files under XP, but I wonder what could have happened. If anyone has an explanation, it would certainly be greatly appreciated.

@Dave-H thank you for your report. Have you tried the asmedia driver for both controllers (silicon image and intel)? Could you please tell me what your motherboard is?

The asahxp32.sys driver from v1.4.1 is not the right driver. The driver I mentioned in a previous post is "asahci32.sys". You need to use only this driver; the others do not allow recognition of GPT disks. All versions of the asahci32.sys driver are contained in the Asmedia ASM106x SATA driver packages, from v2.0.1.916 to v3.3.3. All of these versions are available here: hxxps://www.usbdev.ru/files/asmedia/asm106xdriver/ Version 2.0.3.1 is contained in the package "Asmedia ASM106x SATA Host Controller Driver v2.0.4.0000" (sometimes the driver version does not match the package version). It can also be downloaded from the following link: hxxps://download.asrock.com/Drivers/All/SATA/Asmedia_SATA3(v2.0.4).zip First of all, try for the Silicon Image sata card: there is less chance of success, but in case of a failed installation, most likely, you might get only an error code 10 or 39 and not a BSOD. There is a much better chance of getting a working driver by installing a version of the asahci32.sys for the intel sata controller. But in case of failure the BSOD on reboot is guaranteed

Here are the two lines of text containing the generic hardware ID for a sata/ahci disk controller: a) %PCI\CC_010601.DeviceDesc%=variable, PCI\CC_010601 b) PCI\CC_010601.DeviceDesc ="variable" In both lines of text, the term "variable" should be changed following the information about the other Hardware IDs already listed.

There would be two alternative ways that do not involve the use of an Asmedia eSATA PCIEx card: 1. since there is more than one version of the ASMedia sata driver that allows GPT disk recognition even with some non-ASMedia controllers, you could try installing the ASMedia driver v2.0.3.1 or earlier versions for your Silicon Image card; 2. already reported here: https://msfn.org/board/topic/181911-read-gpt-hard-disk-on-windows-xp/?do=findComment&comment=1258361 In both cases, the .inf file needs to be edited by adding the usual two text lines for recogniton of a generic disk drive. If you want to give it a try, it is a good idea to first save an image of the system disk to restore in case it becomes unbootable. Most important: try it at your own risk

Hi, I do not believe that the missing Core Storage Volumes Driver (csvol.sys) can result in the GPT disk not being recognized. The Paragon driver that should enable GPT disk recognition is "gpt_loader.sys" which has no correlation with the csvol.sys driver as can be seen from the following image (where csvol.sys is not listed under 'Module' section): The failure to start the Core Storage Volumes Driver due to the error related to missing file most likely relates to missing "cng.sys": I could not find the version of the cng.sys driver for XP, and in any case, even if you added the Win10 or Win7 version of the cng.sys file to the Paragon HFS+ program, the Core Storage Volumes Driver itself would still not work in XP since many essential functions are missing for ntoskrnl.exe (currently not even covered by the ntoskrn8.sys Emu_Extender): Regarding the GPT disk listed in XP's Device Manager but not in Disk Management is a situation that always occurs when a GPT disk is not recognized. Below is an example with a 4TB Seagate GPT disk: 1. disk connected to a USB3 port via sata adapter or with a USB enclosure: 2. same disk connected to the external eSATA port of a ASMedia PCI Express to eSATA card:

@Dave-H I don't know if there are any ASM1061 cards in a different format than PCI-Express. Regarding the driver for the ASMedia card, the oldest version that can be found on the net seems to be 1.1.7.110 for which the accompanying 'readme.txt' file clearly reports that Win98 is not supported. So that solution can't be applied. You reported that the 3TB GPT disk is correctly recognized in XP by connecting it directly to a sata port on the motherboard (sata cable to sata port). So what @jaclaz suggested seems to be the best solution: a bracket with an external eSATA port connected internally to the motherboard with a sata cable. This way you could connect your 3.5" HDD box with the eSATA cable to the eSATA port on the bracket without involving the Silicon Image card. Is this a practicable solution? Or have I misunderstood or skipped some steps?

@Dave-H Hi, to have the external 3TB GPT data disk recognized via eSATA connection, if your motherboard has a free PCI Express slot, you can try a PCIEx to eSATA card equipped with the ASMedia 1061 chipset. About the driver for this card you can download the Asmedia ASM-106x Sata controller driver package v3.3.2 or v3.3.3 and install the asahci32.sys v3.2.0 (both packages contain the identical version 3.2.0) from the "scsi" folder without doing any modifications for the .sys and .inf files. In my system, in addition to this driver I used the disk.sys v5.2.3790.4006 and partmgr.sys v5.2.3790.4171 from Win2003, and scsiport.sys v5.1.2600.6073. The Paragon GPT driver is no longer needed. Here is an image of my 8TB GPT data disk connected as an external drive to the eSATA port of the ASM1061 card: On the first boot (and probably on every reboot) with the GPT disk connected, the "File System Check" screen for the GPT disk may appear. I preferred to disable permanently this check for the GPT drive (and also for all drives) by modifying the value "BootExecute" under the key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager". In addition to the above, there is also an alternative way in case you have an intel board. Below an image: This time to get GPT disk recognition you need the driver asahci32.sys v2.0.3.1 and a small modification to the .inf file (I think no hint is needed for it :)). In your case, no longer need for PCIEx card. A simple bracket with an eSATA port as has already been suggested to you is enough, and most likely, again, the eSATA connection should work as intended for your external GPT disk. Obviously, a GPT data disk can be also used as internal drive connected to a free sata port.

Thanks for the link even though the version that will be downloaded is 16.21 and not v16.22. The v16.22 can be found here: https://www.filehorse.com/download-process-explorer/37741/ I have tried the various versions and the only one in the 16.xx series that does not attempt to connect to the internet is indeed v16.22. Attempts to connect start occurring from v16.10, until v15.40 I have not detected any.

Please keep in mind that this version will definitely have a few less features than the newer ones. However, at least it does not attempt to "phone home"

As much as possible, I try to avoid those programs that arbitrarily try to connect to servers. In any case, all the programs running on my pc are monitored (not only with the firewall) and have rules in order to run. The only missing monitoring tool is the antivirus, uninstalled since 2008 and no longer used not even for on-demand scans :)

@AstroSkipper Thanks for the link Even with v16.26 I detected connection attempts to the following IPs: 2.21.14.112 2.23.155.162 2.21.14.97 195.22.200.40 2.23.155.136 195.22.200.33 92.122.251.85 192.229.221.95 23.59.69.139 104.18.15.101 104.18.14.101 With this version the IPs that Process Explorer v16.26 attempts to connect to when it starts are 11, 3 more than version 16.32 I do not like this behavior. I will continue to use v15.11, which I also prefer for cosmetic reasons

Already only because of attempts to connect to IPs 95.101.114.48, 95.101.114.196, 23.220.255.25, 23.220.255.21, 23.59.69.139, 192.229.221.95, 104.18.15.101 and 104.18.14.101 performed by Process Explorer v16.32 when it started (and without any possibility of disabling them via a program option), I would discard such version. I would also like to try version 16.26, but it is no longer available for download.

@TheFighterJetDude here the USB function just lost for some HID devices: in this case, the system hangs always also on shutdown.