I just put a P4 2.4 together for a friends son today. His HDD was small so i got him a WD SATA 40GB drive.

I have installed all cables and when booting from the Windows XP CD after it goes through the checking your system phase it prompts you to " press enter to install XP".

Once i press enter i get no HDD found press F3 to exit.

As the bios is scrolling by i see my WD SATA listed on Secondary ( it was Primary i changed it to see if secondary would work).

I am at a loss guys, I have no idea what i missed.

Andy

There is a Legacy power supply option on the HDD along with the SATA power connection, i have tried both ways and neither changes the outcome.

I looked in the bios 20 times for a setting and found nada.

Why does XP not See my SATA HDD ?

[darin2]

I would say it might be a driver issue, but with Windows XP i'm not sure.

[Washington,D.C.]

Try pressing F6 when the XP disk boots and then installing the SATA drivers from a floppy or a CD.It's easiest with the drivers on a floppy.

[Washington,D.C.]

Also make sure the SATA drive is in the boot order in the bios.This is not IDE drive/

The boot order lists the WD Sata hard drive as 1st boot device.

Pressing F6 i didnt try yet and will after i type this update.

I didnt get any software with my HDD, it was a bare drive from Newegg.

I have not installed a floppy, i never use them.

Andy

thx for the tips i will try F6, thats about all i havent done.

I built one other computer about 6 months ago with a SATA HDD and i did nothing like pressing F6 and it was alos a Windows XP O/S. That installed right away with noting i dont usually do.

Update:

First off i need to make a correct, the 1st boot device is the CD rom the 2nd boot device is the WD SATA HDD.

Pressing F6 during the initial XP setup brigns me to this:

Setup couldnt determine the type of one or more mass storage devices. Two options are given.

1. To specify additional device drivers press "S"
Pressing "S" asks me to insert a floppy, no way to browes to the CD rom, floppy only.

2. If you dont have the additioanl drivers press "enter".
This cancels the installation.

So it looks like i need drivers on a floppy ?

I will check the WD wed site.

Andy

[Washington,D.C.]

You may need drivers from the motrherboard maker.

Yeah i just found this page with other people having the same issue.

http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic11065-pg1.html&pp=20

Its all chinese to me though. I went to the Asus site and typed in the MB info and have no clue which drivers i need. None of them look like the correct one.

Its an Asus P4S800D-X.

i cant figure it out, none say SATA drivers, am i missing something ?

Andy

[Washington,D.C.]

try this one

SiS RAID Driver V1.05


http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx

I can but how do i get all that on a floppy ?

Andy

[Washington,D.C.]

http://dlsvr03.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mis...sisraid105.zip

[Washington,D.C.]

Download it.Unzip it,then copy in to a floppy.

[Washington,D.C.]

Unzip it after you save it.Open it and see what it says.

Thx DC but its 5 megs and it has to be on a floppy.


any ideas ?

Andy

unzipped its 6.12 mb

[Washington,D.C.]

Open it.it has drivers from all Windows on it and likely has a Read me file.You need to download it to your hard drive and unzip it first.

[Washington,D.C.]

Click Disk driver.It has a file called "Make disk"

I see it, i will try it now.

If this dont work i am tempted use the Asus SATA drivers from the one guys link on the other forum.

Shutting down to try the new system.

thx for the help DC, lets hope this works or im done buying bare anything!

Andy

Victory with the RAID drivers, thx DC.

Just finished loading and updating everything, put it in the box and will drop it off to him Wednesday.

From the MD CD there is also the driver diskette maker, but you cant browse to it during the installation of XP, your only option is the A drive.

That took twice as long as i planned!

thx again

Andy