Windows XP HD SATA Drivers

[bluethunder]

We recently received a group of Dell Optiplex 755's, and I have ran into a small delimma. As we have not yet moved to Vista...thank goodness ...I am trying to load Windows XP w/SP2, and have ran into an issue with with the SATA drivers for the hard drive. At first, XP would start loading all of the drivers during the start of the setup process, but would blue screen once this process was completed. I went to Dell's website and downloaded the SATA drivers and placed them on a floppy. There are no floppy drives on this computer so I am using a USB floppy drive. Once the setup process started again, I did the F6 deal, and chose which driver would be needed, which is the Intel ® ICH9 SATA AHCI Controller for desktops. It continued on it's merry way, but once the hard drive had been formatted, it asked for the Matrix Storage driver. I could not progress any further, even after going to Intel's site and downloading the floppy utility that loads the necessary drivers, but it still would not work. I have had this problem before with a Gateway tablet, but was sent a file from them and was able to get by this part. I have checked other forums, and it appears others have had this same issue. Is a way to get what I need, or would it be easier just to try and slipstream a CD to include the drivers needed. If so, does anyone know a place with good directions on how to get this done.

Also, has anyone had any luck creating a Ghost multiboot CD with Ghost 11, a.k.a. Ghost Solution Suite 2.0. If so, I would greatly appreciate any information regarding this. We have Dell 745's that we have been using diskettes with when first imaging, and I would love to get back to CD's. Now that we have these 755's, the issue is compounded. I know if I put it in legacy mode, it will pick up the CD, but I do not know how to make a muliboot CD with this version of Ghost. I have looked, and can only find info with Ghost 8.

Thank you.

[bluethunder]

The issue with loading Windows XP on this particular computer has been resolved. Dell has an update for the BIOS, which adds legacy support. The SATA was switched to Legacy, and after using F6 to load the SATA drivers for the hard drive, it continued on with the installation as normal. I will post the problem with creating a multiboot cd in that forum.

[capteeou]

I have my optiplex 755 working in legacy mode and I installed all the drivers from the resource cd but when I try to put the bios back to AHCI raid auto detect mode, xp sp2 will not boot. How can I force windows to accept the right driver so it will boot with the AHCI setting in the bios? I have a fully bootable and working machine in xp but only in legacy. I'm on BIOS A04 which is the latest.

Edited January 3, 2008 by capteeou

[DFAIT_Workstation]

Hey B-Thunder and Cap-T-OU

We ran into similar problems but a colleague figured out how to install the ICH9 drivers. A little background.....

- New Dell Optiplex 775's arrived and we have an image (XP SP2) to install so there's no room for F6 (although that doesn't seem to install them)

- we have a config tool that is unique for each model of computer.....it installs all missing drivers and for those with SATA controllers we've successfully used the "Intel® Matrix Storage Manager" install script which looks like this:

rundll32.exe setupapi.dll,InstallHinfSection DefaultInstall 132 %~dp0imsm_pre.inf

This script didn't work for the 775 and neither did using Device Manager Wizard......so you have to "force" the installation of the ICH9 driver.

- Ensure in BIOS, the HDD is set for Legacy mode

- Open Device Manager

- Open IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers

- Select the "middle" occurance of the Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller

To ensure you have the right one, open the Properties and look at the "Location"....it should appear as:

PCI Bus 0, device 31, function 5

- Once you have the right device select the Drivers tab

- Select Update Driver

- Choose radiobutton "Install from list or specific....." Next

- Choose radiobutton "Don't search. I will choose ....." Next

- Select Have Disk

- browse to the path where you have stored the Intel Matrix drivers

- Choose the ICH9 SATA AHCI Controller driver Next

- You'll see a message telling you that this driver is incompatible or it doesn't match ...whatever

select the button to complete the install (Next or Finish) .....sorry but I don't have this in front of me....

- Reboot the computer and in the BIOS change the HDD to RAID ACHI and this should give you the needed SATA controller driver for the Optiplex 755

Good luck

S

[bluethunder]

Thank you for the info. I'll be sure to give this a try, but we have now started moving to Windows Vista... on some of the computers. I could not get Vista to run correctly in legacy mode, but the drivers were not an issue. I can say that we have not had a problem once a standard image is created with the Optiplex 755 and Windows XP. We still have an issue with Ghost 11 and creating a multiboot CD, but that's an issue for a separate post.

[SSX4life]

If you require any further assistance with installing xp pro on the 755's let me know. I can assist you with creating a recovery disk from an original source media and slipping in the corresponding files.... assuming you have windows vista business of course.