SATA drives - don't understand response from HP

[miles_muso]

Hi all,

Newbie to this forum.

I have a new HP notebook (a dv9640us, to be exact) which came pre-installed with Vista, but I wish to install XP and have purchased a new, legal, copy of XP for this purpose. (polite note: I'd prefer it if this post wasn't used to start a Vista v XP thread, I really just want some answers to my particular problem. Thanks )

A few other forum posts have suggested using nLite to get over the non-recognition of SATA drives in XP (which means that XP will not install) by adding the correct drivers.

I've tried this a few times, creating an ISO image with drivers extracted from the relative .exe files, but I've had no luck so far. I've read the nLite user guide and the FAQs concerning SATA, but these seem to be aimed at using nForce raid controllers. I have been in touch with HP (using their on-line 'speak-to-a-qualified-techie' service which, surprisingly, gave me a free IM session with a techie who knew what she was talking about!) and got a large email back from them. In it were instructions for installing XP on a SATA-based system, but these need an external floppy drive, which I do not have. However, I believe nLite can solve this problem, I just don't know the exact configuration needed. Therefore, I reproduce the email from HP below:

Here are steps to disable the SATA from native support:

1. Turn on or restart the notebook.

2. Press the F10 key when the "HP Invent" logo appears on the screen. This will open the BIOS menu.

3. Select the "System Configuration" tab.

4. Select "Disabled" for the "SATA Native Support" item.

5. Press F10 to Save and Exit. Choose Yes for "Save configuration changes and exit now".

You can install SATA drivers on a Retail OS by following these steps:

1) Enter F10 Setup, and go to System Configuration/Device Configurations/SATA Native Mode to Disable.

2) Install Windows XP Service Pack 2 in whatever manner is typical for your organization.

3) Download the Intel SATA AHCI Controller Driver, SoftPaq SP32478.exe, from the link below:

ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp32001-32500/sp32478.exe

4) Extract all the files from the SoftPaq. A USB floppy is necessary for this step. Run sp32478; this will create a floppy disk. The files will be located on this floppy.

5) These files should be located on the floppy disk.

a. iaahci.cat

b. iaahci.inf

c. iastor.cat

d. iastor.inf

e. iastor.sys

f. license.txt

g. readme.txt

h. txtsetup.oem

Note: You can use the steps 4 & 5 on a Desktop system having floppy drive and then transfer those files to a CD-R.

6) Download and run the Intel Chipset Installation Utility for ICH7, SoftPaq SP32555, from the link below:

ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp32501-33000/sp32555.exe

7) In Device Manager, right-click the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers/Intel ® 82801 GBM/GHM (ICH7-M Family) Serial ATA Storage Controller and select 'Update Driver'.

8) Follow these steps to complete the Hardware Update Wizard:

a. At the first dialog, select 'No, not this time' when prompted to connect to Windows Update.

b. At the next dialog, select 'Install from a list or specific location(Advanced).

c. At the next dialog, select 'Don't search. I will choose the driver to install'.

d. When prompted to select the device driver you want to install for this hardware, choose the first one in the list: Intel® 82801GBM/GHM (ICH-7M Family) Serial ATA Storage Controller - 27C4.

e. When prompted to insert the manufacturer's installation disk, browse to c:\SWSetup\SATA AHCI Drivers\, and click OK.

f. When prompted to select the device driver you want to install for this hardware, select the Intel® 82801GBM SATA AHCI Controller

g. A warning that Windows cannot verify that the device is compatible with your hardware will appear. When asked if you want to continue installing the driver, select Yes.

h. The installation will complete.

9) Shut down Windows and restart the computer. Enter F10 setup when prompted during the boot.

10) Go to System Configuration/Device Configurations/SATA Native Mode and change it to Enable, then save settings and exit F10 Setup.

11) After Windows restarts, the additional SATA components will be updated. A System Settings Change will appear. When asked "Do you want to restart your computer now?" click Yes.

12) When Windows restarts, the SATA AHCI drivers will be completely installed.

I downloaded the 'softpak' 32478 and tried to use WinRAR to extract the drivers. However, the only file extracted was called 'TEMP.ima' and I'm sure this won't do the trick.

How can I use nLite to get round this problem?

Also, can someone tell me the difference (and why there is a difference) between text and uPNP drivers.

I appreciate that this is an exceptionally long post (for a newbie) and that the answer may already be available by reading through a mass of other posts, but if someone can help then I would be extremely grateful, and my failth in the kindness of strangers will forever be restoreth!!

[CPU]

...

Edited November 17, 2007 by CPU

[Kelsenellenelvian]

Here is your Sata drivers ready for integration with nLite...

Just unzip and choose iastore.inf

DONOT foget to choose txtmode setup when you get the popup about the SATA drivers!

[miles_muso]

CPU and Kelsenellenelvian,

Thanks so much to both of you for your help. I'll try it out tomorrow and report back.

[jaclaz]

For the record, there is this idea from d4vr0s to use a "virtual floppy" with grub4dos that should be able to solve similar problems (missing floppy to use the "F6" feature):

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?sho...c=20543&hl=

jaclaz

[Phred]

If you do find a hacked INF for your particular chipset, to allow XP to "support" AHCI, switching from the IDE driver to the iastor driver yields no gain in performance. I have done all the tricks on my Intel ICH8 chipset MOBO with XP installs, it benchmarks the same whether I've tricked XP into using AHCI or just using the standard IDE mode drivers.

Cheers, Good Luck, and Welcome to MSFN!

Is AHCI support a pre-req for enabling SATA hot-swap?

Phred

[miles_muso]

Hi All,

SUCCESS!

I used nLite to create an ISO image, and booted from there. However, the information HP gave me was incorrect, and in fact the chipset on the dv9640 is the newer GM965 using the ICH8M controller, not the ICH7M that they specified.

This was the reason my previous ISO installs failed to work.

Should anyone else have a similar problem, I strongly recommend using Intel's chip identifier utility, which can be downloaded from their site (or use this link.)

Also, a good idea gleaned from another forum is to copy the C:\swsetup directory from Vista before installing XP. Although the .exe files here will not run, it's a good place to look for drivers once XP has been installed.

I also had a lot of good ideas by reading the step-by-step guide found at nogodforme, which although a strange title for a site is in fact very useful (and, to their credit, was referred to me by HP themselves, although they do not recognise it 'officially' )

Anyway, if someone somewhere wants to add this info to a google-able site, maybe my experience might help others.

Cheers!

Edited November 17, 2007 by miles_muso

[spectrumav]

Hello Miles. I see that you were able to get your dv9640us to load XP, I too purchased my dv9640 about a month ago. I am trying to do that as well but the issue is that my BIOS does not list SATA Native Support or anything even similar to that. I just loaded the latest BIOS, F.23, yesterday and I was wondering what your BIOS version was. All the other steps that I need to follow make sense to me but I just can not get my XP installer to load special drivers (F6 when in setup) and it does not see a hard drive to install to (which I believe is for the fact of that the BIOS will not let me disable the SATA support. Any help you or anyone could offer would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[AaronFTW]

Right. So I am going to use the file that Kel provided to get Windows XP on my Acer Aspire 5630 which has the "Intel 82801 GBM/GHM (ICH7-M Family) Serial ATA Storage Controller". Wish me luck.