nLite XP Pro SP2 installer can't find any hard drives!

[ambee]

I could really use someone's expert help with nLite. There's some kind of bug or glitch while installing XP Pro SP2 on the RAID 0 volume of my Intel DQ35MP motherboard with it's ICH9 RAID F6 driver floppy: The first phase of the F6 process works fine, but when it comes to the second phase, when it tries to copy the driver files to the hard drive, it insists the F6 floppy that worked perfectly in the first phase does not contain what it's looking for in the second phase (detailed description available upon request).

So two different people suggested nLite, which looks very cool and powerful. But the nLite generated install CD had fatal problems of its own!

After experimenting some, I tried the following two attempts which were deliberately very, very simple:

(1) Left all settings alone (in their default state, without importing any previous settings or anything else) except to add drivers (the ones in question). Result of installation with created ISO: It runs through everything without any user interaction and then aborts with an error message saying something like "Setup could not find any hard drives on your system".

(2) Left all settings alone as above except that I went into the "Unattended" option trying to find a setting that told it to NOT do an unattended setup so that I could manually specify the RAID volume where XP should be installed. No dice -- there is no such option! There IS an option labeled "GUI attended", but that's highly misleading, because what it really does in ONLY allow normal user interaction in the "final stage of the installation", which is much too late! Result: "Setup could not find any hard drives on your system".

How incredibly frustrating! I've been trying to install XP on this system for more than a week without success!

I urgently need help.

[GMan_PCTT]

I could really use someone's expert help with nLite. There's some kind of bug or glitch while installing XP Pro SP2 on the RAID 0 volume of my Intel DQ35MP motherboard with it's ICH9 RAID F6 driver floppy: The first phase of the F6 process works fine, but when it comes to the second phase, when it tries to copy the driver files to the hard drive, it insists the F6 floppy that worked perfectly in the first phase does not contain what it's looking for in the second phase (detailed description available upon request).

So two different people suggested nLite, which looks very cool and powerful. But the nLite generated install CD had fatal problems of its own!

After experimenting some, I tried the following two attempts which were deliberately very, very simple:

(1) Left all settings alone (in their default state, without importing any previous settings or anything else) except to add drivers (the ones in question). Result of installation with created ISO: It runs through everything without any user interaction and then aborts with an error message saying something like "Setup could not find any hard drives on your system".

(2) Left all settings alone as above except that I went into the "Unattended" option trying to find a setting that told it to NOT do an unattended setup so that I could manually specify the RAID volume where XP should be installed. No dice -- there is no such option! There IS an option labeled "GUI attended", but that's highly misleading, because what it really does in ONLY allow normal user interaction in the "final stage of the installation", which is much too late! Result: "Setup could not find any hard drives on your system".

How incredibly frustrating! I've been trying to install XP on this system for more than a week without success!

I urgently need help.

Hi Ambee,

I've experienced this same frustration myself when I set up my first new SATA equipped system over 2 years ago. Nothing would let me get past the "No drives found" issue until I tried starting the install with the 6 floppy disk boot disk set provided by MS for XP. These floppies will contain the same files that are normally copied to the drive from the install CD, but they somehow get around the 'missing drive' issue. You can download them from the link below if you're interested in giving it a shot.

Note that these are only available for XP Home & Pro and will not support a SP3 disk. You will have to add SP3 manually once the system is up and running.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310994

[ambee]

Hi Ambee,

I've experienced this same frustration myself when I set up my first new SATA equipped system over 2 years ago. Nothing would let me get past the "No drives found" issue until I tried starting the install with the 6 floppy disk boot disk set provided by MS for XP. These floppies will contain the same files that are normally copied to the drive from the install CD, but they somehow get around the 'missing drive' issue. You can download them from the link below if you're interested in giving it a shot.

Note that these are only available for XP Home & Pro and will not support a SP3 disk. You will have to add SP3 manually once the system is up and running.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310994

Thanks for your reply, GMan_PCTT!

There's info I didn't provide on this forum that suggests that your proposed solution likely wouldn't work for me. This is the info I obliquely referred to in my OP's first paragraph (i.e, "detailed description available upon request"). The relevant part of that issue for this thread is that Intel insists the bug/glitch I ran into at the outset that caused me to turn to nLite in the first place was caused by the fact that the Sony external USB floppy drive I used isn't on the Microsoft approved hardware compatibility list for Win XP. In my opinion, that's total BS, but they wouldn't help me until I got one that's on the HCL (which should be arriving Wednesday, June 11'th).

But back to this thread here for now. I'm interpreting your reply as telling me that I probably can't get nLite to do what I want. If you or anyone else thinks differently, please let me know.

[GMan_PCTT]

Thanks for your reply, GMan_PCTT!

There's info I didn't provide on this forum that suggests that your proposed solution likely wouldn't work for me. This is the info I obliquely referred to in my OP's first paragraph (i.e, "detailed description available upon request"). The relevant part of that issue for this thread is that Intel insists the bug/glitch I ran into at the outset that caused me to turn to nLite in the first place was caused by the fact that the Sony external USB floppy drive I used isn't on the Microsoft approved hardware compatibility list for Win XP. In my opinion, that's total BS, but they wouldn't help me until I got one that's on the HCL (which should be arriving Wednesday, June 11'th).

But back to this thread here for now. I'm interpreting your reply as telling me that I probably can't get nLite to do what I want. If you or anyone else thinks differently, please let me know.

By no means am I implying that nLite is not capable of getting around the issue. I am only saying that the boot disk set was the only way I was able to get past it. I strongly suspect that it has to do with trying to install to a SATA hard drive using an IDE optical drive. Although my BIOS was set up so that the SATA was the primary boot drive, it could not be found by the installation once the install had copied all of the files it needed to that same hard drive.

I agree that the HCL is a bunch of bullony. I sure hope that the new floppy drive is able to help you get past the problem.

[ambee]

By no means am I implying that nLite is not capable of getting around the issue. I am only saying that the boot disk set was the only way I was able to get past it. I strongly suspect that it has to do with trying to install to a SATA hard drive using an IDE optical drive. Although my BIOS was set up so that the SATA was the primary boot drive, it could not be found by the installation once the install had copied all of the files it needed to that same hard drive.

Okay, let me try this a different way: Does anyone know how to tell nLite precisely what volume you want to install Windows on? I can't find any settings to choose that.

Forget RAID for a minute. If I had multiple normal (non-RAID) volumes already set up on a given computer, how would I tell nLite which volume/partition I wanted Windows installed on?

[zipzap]

<br />I could really use someone's expert help with nLite. There's some kind of bug or glitch while installing XP Pro SP2 on the RAID 0 volume of my Intel DQ35MP motherboard with it's ICH9 RAID F6 driver floppy: The first phase of the F6 process works fine, but when it comes to the second phase, when it tries to copy the driver files to the hard drive, it insists the F6 floppy that worked perfectly in the first phase does not contain what it's looking for in the second phase (detailed description available upon request).<br /><br />So two different people suggested nLite, which looks very cool and powerful. But the nLite generated install CD had fatal problems of its own!<br /><br />After experimenting some, I tried the following two attempts which were deliberately very, very simple:<br /><br />(1) Left all settings alone (in their default state, without importing any previous settings or anything else) except to add drivers (the ones in question). Result of installation with created ISO: It runs through everything without any user interaction and then aborts with an error message saying something like <font color="blue">"Setup could not find any hard drives on your system"</font>.<br /><br />(2) Left all settings alone as above except that I went into the "Unattended" option trying to find a setting that told it to NOT do an unattended setup so that I could manually specify the RAID volume where XP should be installed. No dice -- there is no such option! There IS an option labeled "GUI attended", but that's highly misleading, because what it really does in ONLY allow normal user interaction in the "final stage of the installation", which is much too late! Result: <font color="blue">"Setup could not find any hard drives on your system"</font>.<br /><br />How incredibly frustrating! I've been trying to install XP on this system for more than a week without success!<br /><br />I urgently need help.<br /><br /><br />

<br /><br /><br />

Hi im not much of a expert and I created a earlier version of nlite for XP Pro and just added the floppy disc when asked for when install Windows. Hit the F6 key when it tells you and worked fine for me. I assume your motherboard has been set up for SATA drives in the BIOS.?

If I didnt hit the F6 key it wouldnt find the HDD. I did many tests on this with my first encounter with a SATA drive. The above method was reliable enough for me so never incorporated the SATA disk when making Nlite