Install help!

[lectrolux]

Hi everyone, im new to the forum, but hoping that you can be of assistance (its needed desperatly!)

This past week, a virus decimated my hardrive, and so I decided to cut my losses and format the bloody thing (all important stuff such as university work is regularly backed up).

After formatting, I set Bios to boot from cd and inserted the winXP cd (original copy, not an illegal version) to begin setup process. After a few seconds Windows said it could not find my hardrive - I have been told that this is because I have a Serial ATA drive - is this true??

Unfortunately, im not very technically-minded so im not sure where to go with this one!

Some info about my pc:

The pc is from dell, and is a dimension 8400 model (found here: http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products...hs1&l=en&s=dhs)

it also has an upgraded graphics card, 1gb of ram and an upgraded 250gb hardrive

The hardrive shows as DRIVE0: WDC WD2500JD-75HBB0 in the bios if thats any help??

If anyone can point me in right direction here, i will be so greatful!

Many thanks for your time

Chris (lectrolux)

[lectrolux]

ps, im on housemates laptop, so if I need to get anything, it houldnt be a problem!

[prathapml]

this is because I have a Serial ATA drive

Yes, quite possible.

You need to use the SATA drivers floppy that came with your motherboard. Press F6 when it asks for the SATA/RAID drivers in the "loading" status bar.

There are other ways to integrate support for your SATA into CD itself (nLite, MassStorageDrivers Pack) - but those are a bit more complex.

[lectrolux]

You need to use the SATA drivers floppy that came with your motherboard. Press F6 when it asks for the SATA/RAID drivers in the "loading" status bar.

dell didnt give me any floppy for it

Guess I gotta go for a search then

Thanks for the help - will let you know how I get on

[prathapml]

No floppy?

Well, if you could tell us which motherboard this is, or find the name of the SATA controller, we'd be able to try and point you to where you can find it.

[N1K]

Drivers are often given on CD, check your motherboard CD where should you find drivers for your S-ATA controller... You should extract those drivers on floppy disk...

During the text portion of setup, setup asks you to press F6 if you want to install third party SCSI or RAID driver...