SATA on A8V no floppy

[Dipper14]

Well I followed a guide to try and setup windows on my SATA hard drive on the A8V motherboard. When going to install windows, it did not recognize that I had a hard drive installed. So I tried using the F6 method, but when I inserted the cd-rom that came with the hard drive it did nothing.

So I went only searching for a way to install my hard drive, I found a guide and found out about nlite. For the past several hours, I have tried burning several cd's to attempt to get one that will work. I am able to go through the whole process of copying the windows cd, integrating a driver, and creating an iso then burning the iso onto a blank cd. The cd that I make is bootable, but still does not detect the hard drive. This leads me to believe that I am selecting the wrong driver. I am unsure about which driver to select, but I chose one on each disc.

Heres a little info about my system (if it helps to choose the correct driver)

Windows XP Professional

Asus A8V motherboard

Amd 3800x2 cpu

2 x 512 mb generic ram

x1600 pro ati sapphire video card

320 GB Seagate SATA hard drive (this is what I am trying to install windows on)

The first driver that I used was from the Asus site, I navigated to motherboard, socket 939, and then A8V. I then selected RAID and got the latest driver. The driver was called VIA VT6420 (VT8237) SATA RAID Driver Package Version 2.20D WHQL. I download that extracted it and on nlite I selected multiple driver folder and selected the folder, and multiple options came up. This is where I really am unsure what to do, I picked the one that looked the most correct (there were about 20 options, but 10 of those were PIDE so those were out of the question) There were really 2 that looked correct, 1 in the folder VIARAID220D/VIARAID/SATA/driver/Winxp (this is the one I chose to use) and one in VIARAID220D/VIARAID/Driverdisk/Winxp . You can see the list of options that came up here: http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/4937/whatdriver2nr9.jpg

The second driver that I used was from the VIA site, going to the VIA Arena for drivers to Win XP, IDE, Raid, SATA, then to VT8237 Integrated Serial ATA RAID controller. I downloaded the file at the top of this page: http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageI...mp;SubCatID=143 , so I picked the multiple file driver on nLite and several options came up. The list of options that come up can be seen here: http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/8630/whatdriver1ft0.jpg, I tried the highlighted one but that didnt work.

Well needless to say I am pretty clueless about picking the proper driver, I assumed that you need only 1, but maybe you need 2 or something to get it to work. I'm fairly certain that the 2 drivers that I downloaded off of ASUS and VIA's website are the proper ones for my computer, however I am unsure which one I am supposed to integrate. I tried to make this post as extensive as possible about what I attempted, so that it might be easier to help me. If you could help me by explaining to me what I am doing wrong/what driver to pick, you would really be helping me out, and I thank you in advance for any help you can possibly lend to me.

[PC_LOAD_LETTER]

if you know the target system and have the correct driver the way you are attempting is the best but personally, i prefer just using Driverpacks to make the cd somewhat universal

http://driverpacks.net/DriverPacks/

Get DriverPack BASE & MassStorage point DR base at the location you extracted your cd to, add DP MassStorage (check text mode checkbox)

it'll add about 5-6 MB to your ISO size but its well worth it.

[Ascii2]

Put the SATA controller driver on a floppy.

Then try setup again, insert the floppy, and tap F6 when prompted.

Windows setup checks only the floppy drive for the driver.

Edited January 17, 2008 by Ascii2

[XPC-001]

does the board bios see the hdd at all?... funny cause my my main has all sata drives and i never had 2 install the sata drivers at all...

if the bios see's the hdd then windows install cd should see it too

[Dipper14]

Put the SATA controller driver on a floppy.

Then try setup again, insert the floppy, and tap F6 when prompted.

After all that I forgot to mention I do not have a floppy drive.

edit- i believe it detects it it says that theres a ST drive under primary master or something, and in boot order it says something along the lines of Hdd1 or something

Edited January 17, 2008 by Dipper14

[Ascii2]

funny cause my my main has all sata drives and i never had 2 install the sata drivers at all...

Your probably have your system drive connected to an SATA controller as part of the motherboard's chipset.

EDIT: I looked at the specifications of the Asus A8V and it appears that chipset includes two SATA controllers. The problem wherefore may be BIOS. The controller being used may be disabled or not implemented in BIOS. If the later, a different BIOS, floppy drive, or an SATA to something else adapter may be necessary.

Edited January 17, 2008 by Ascii2