HDD not detected

[Warren Peace]

I'm having a real tough time with my Unattended disk.

I thought everything was working flawlessly based on my tests using a Virtual Machine, but of course that doesn't let me test out my driver installs at all.

When I run my UA CD on a Virtual Machine... it's pretty much unattended.

Basically only asks me which hard drive I want to use, and how I want to format it.

Today I figured I'd give it it's first real test by trying to boot from the CD and actually format my real hard drive and install.

At first when I did this, I had my USB2 HDD plugged into my PC and didn't think anything of it at first. This time however, the CD ran completely unattended. I just hit any key on my keyboard to let my computer know that I really did want to boot from a DVD, and it went to town without asking me which hard drive to use or how I wanted to format it.

Thankfully it didn't format anything, because it started installing on my USB2 drive.

When it completed copying all of the necessary files over to the HDD, it rebooted as usual and Windows started up from my local disk C (fixed drive). Because of this Windows never completed installing on my Removable USB2 drive.

I proceeded then to power off my Removable USB2 drive and try to install again from my bootDVD, only to find out that Windows is not even recognizing that I have any HDDs. It tells me setup cannot complete at this time and to hit F3 to exit.

Anyone have any clues what could cause this? My HDD is clearly functioning, because if I don't boot from CD/DVD, it will boot from that HDD instead.

Thank you for any help you can provide

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Update

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Just tried again using a store-bought WinXP CD

same problem... so I know it has nothing to do with my UA CD

Edited August 26, 2005 by Warren Peace

[jaclaz]

hmmm, is your (internal) HD either SCSI or SATA?

jaclaz

[Warren Peace]

No, it's an old 40GB IDE ATA HDD.

I think I've now resolved that issue.

It seems I needed to use a floppy disk that had RAID ITE Drivers on it.

I didn't think this was necessary since I'm not using an array of disks.

But after hitting F6 when Windows setup was starting to load RAID drivers, it actually recognizes my HDD.

Now that that is cleared up, I've now got some more work to do with my unattended disk... because I didn't have it set up for RAID drivers, and the Windows installer won't let me look on a floppy disk if I'm trying to install from my current UA Disk.

Guess I've got some more research to do.

Thank you for your reply

[jaclaz]

Yep, I asked for SATA or SCSI (forgot about RAID) meaning if you were sure you did not need an "F6" driver...

jaclaz

[Warren Peace]

I wasn't sure at all, this was my first time formatting since I got this mobo.

Thanks again for your help though, you pointed me in the right direction.

[jaclaz]

Read here:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=32151

jaclaz