Hi, I'd like to ask some basic question, so maybe you can point me in the right direction....first I want to know what to look for before I get into it.

Situation:

- I currently have a Windows (nlite 1.0.1) installation with SP2 on an IDE drive.

- I have nForce on motherboard.

- I added a new SATA drive and it got recognized without problems. I created a partition from within Windows XP and already put some data on it.

- Now I want to install windows on the SATA drive, because the IDE drive is old and slow.

- I disconnected the IDE drive and tried to install the Windows nLite installation (unattended setup from CD) on the SATA drive.

- Windows setup copied files to drive, but after the first reboot I got the following message: "error loading operating system"

Question:

What could be the cause of this?

Does this have anything to do with the combination SATA/nLite/Windows XP?

If not, and if I find a solution for this... can I install this Windows nLite installation on my SATA harddisk? Or do I have to get into the whole SataRaid driver integration thing in any case?

I have SATA controller enabled in BIOS, but RAID is disabled. I just want to install Windows on this **** drive.

Thx in advance.

When installing WinXP, did you format the SATA drive? You could try that.

No, I created a partition on it with windows disk management.

I suppose I could try deleting and formatting a new partition, with windows setup this time.

But windows setup did copy files on it, so the drive is recognized...

Ok, so this error message is probably not related to the SATA/RAID stuff.

I'm still confused though... do people only need to integrate the raid drivers if they have RAID fuction enabled, or is driver integration necessary for any SATA drive connected to a nForce motherboard, when installing windows nlite (unattended) ?

Creating partition and formatting the disk from within windows setup did not help. Still "error loading operating system" after first reboot.

The solution was to change access mode for the SATA disk to 'large' instead of 'auto' in the BIOS. Then format again.

Windows installed fine after that.

My PC is relatively new and bios is from 2006.

If anyone knows why this helped I'd really like to know... also I wonder if changing access mode to 'large' affects performance. I'm having trouble finding good information about this.

I found this thread where the poster made the same discovery as you. Supposedly a problem with ASUS boards.

THX all!!

Same problem.

I also switched SATA settings in bios to LARGE from AUTO.

I had to reformat and restart to OS install...works like a charm now.