Partial Windows XP Install, SATA Drives not recong

[jwlbiar]

First of all I am new and thanks for reading this post.

My system specs are below:

Motherboard: ABIT IC7-G

CPU: Intel P4 3.0 GHz CPU 1MB cache with HT

Memory: 1GB PC3200 RAM

HDD: 160 GB WD SATA Drive (SATA1) & 250 GB WD SATA Drive (SATA2)

Video: 9800XT

I have created a Windows XP installation CD with SP2 and the SATA drivers using nLite. I was able to get the machine to boot from the CD, partition the drives and install the OS files on the SATA1 drive. After the files were installed by XP, the XP installation process rebooted the machine and the machine did not recognize the SATA drives that XP just installed the files on to. How frusterating.... So I tried the installation process again and the same thing happened.

Please be also be aware that both drives are recognized by the system at startup, but both drives are slated as master...is this possible? I have no RAID configuration as I want to see both drives seperately and I have done no BIOS updates.

So my question is this, how do I get my machine to boot from the SATA drives to continue my Windows XP installation?

Any help related to this topic would be greatly appreciated....

[mattofak]

although its a far shot, are you absolutly sure that your RAID BIOS is not putting your drives into a raid config... also, generally both drives should be ok as master, but it really depends on how the ABit board is set up... i cant remeber it runs the RAIDs off one bus, try making your RAID drive in port 2 a slave(if that option is given either on the drive, or in your RAID BIOS)

else, dont know...

[raskren]

There's no master/slave configuration with SATA drives so don't worry about it.

[Exactly] when does the installation process go wrong? Do you receive any error messages?

It sounds like the necessary drivers are configured as regular PnP drivers and not textmode drivers.

[jwlbiar]

Please keep in mind that I have SATA DVD drives as well connected to SATA3. The WD 160 GB is connected to SATA1 and the WD 250 GB is connected to SATA2. I have no IDE devices.

Ok. This is exactly what happened....

1. Created XP installation disc and streamlined SP2 and the SATA drivers to the disc so that I would not have to hit the F6 key during installation (on another pc).

2. I used this disc to boot the machine and the drivers loaded, I partitioned the disks, and copied the files to hard drive.

3. Once the files were copied, the XP installation then reboots the machine to continue the installation from the hard drive.

4. Upon reboot, the system tells me there are no bootable device. Not sure why. Perhaps I need to make some changes in the BIOS or perhaps I need to flash the BIOS. When I look at the BIOS it sees both drives, but will not boot from them. I guess the SATA drives are not set as bootable in the BIOS. So, how do I set the settings in the BIOS to make these SATA drives bootable? I dont want to have a RAID configuration because I want to see both drives individually.

Any ideas?

[raskren]

Well you can instruct the BIOS where to look for a bootable device but that's really all. By telling the BIOS HDD-0 is bootable, doesn't make it bootable.

I still think you configured the textmode driver incorrectly. Did you tell nLite that it is a textmode driver and not a regular PnP driver?

I don't know exactly how nLite does its driver integration thing with textmode but manually, you would add a .sys file and possibly a .dll file to the i386 directory of your install CD and adding an entry to txtsetup.sif. You might want to scan this directory for the pertinent files.

[jwlbiar]

Ok thanks, I will take a look at those files.

But what I was hoping for were exact instructions on how to setup my ABIT ic7-g motherboard to setup the SATA drives as bootable.

Thanks again...

[jwlbiar]

Could some please take a look at this link. I have posted more detail of the problem there..

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.co...50656baf0451bac

Thanks!