NLite Rocks

[ssbihli]

Built my new Conroe system today. I was worried that I was going to have problems booting from an SATA drive w/o a floppy disk to install the drivers. I was also not looking forward to installing SP2 after the fact.

So, I:

1) Downloaded SP2 from Microsoft's website. (I grabbed the ones for IT people).

2) Downloaded Intel SATA drivers. You can find a version of it for floppy disks on Intel's website, which has the core drivers for the ICH7DH. (I have an MSI Platinum V2 (aka PowerUp Edition). If you have a different Mobo, you'll need to find that manufacturer's SATA drivers.)

3) I ran NLite, slipstreamed SP2, and added the drivers. (One other note. Since the Intel floppy disk is an image, I had to download WinImage to extract the individual files for NLite)

4) Other than that I tweaked no other options....don't know if NLite is bug free and don't want to tempt fate.

I built the system. Went into the BIOS and tweaked the Boot Sequence, SATA/PATA voodoo magic settings, and then put the new XP disk in the CD-ROM drive and it ALL WORKED!!!

A couple of key things. I'm not sure if the drivers I integrated found the SATA drive or if the BIOS did it since the BIOS did detect the SATA drive and allowed to select it as a boot drive even before XP was installed.

Also, Having SP2 slipstreamed allowed XP Setup to detect the 250GB drive as 250GB and not 130 GB for the original Windows XP.

Anyway, all-in-all I don't know what I would have done w/o NLite.

I'll be making a donation as soon as I determine how FPS I now get on Oblivion.

s

[ricktendo]

WOOOOOOOO!

Another Happy Customer... Gr8 job nuhi

[LadyLeah]

Wow. Congratz to you and of course to nuhi. Im so excited to get mine working. Arghh I wish I were smarter....

[d4ead]

hmmm ive not needed a floppy for sata hard drives for a while maybe drivers were in sp2. Good luck with oblivion, its harsh on fps. Test it on quake 4 and fear as well.

[ssbihli]

d4ead, you are correct.

After I finally got some sleep. I remembered that before I tried the NLite CD with SP2, I tried my original Windows XP Pro CD I bought the day XP came out first. It found the SATA drive too, but only registered it as 130 GB. I guess you need SP1 or higher for 48-bit addressing.

So, not sure how it found the drive given that so many others have a problem with it. The only thing I can think of is that there is something in the Mobo BIOS.

...all ideas on this are welcome.

Will also be testing with COD2 tonight and then overclocking it this weekend.