SATA Hard Drive on install

[midlander99]

Hi all, I have been building systems since the mid 90's and have come across this problem several times. Hopefully you are able to follow what I am on about, lets see. Please don't jump off at the deep end until the full explanation has been read.

I have installed many computers from a fresh install on SATA hard drives. Some motherboards allow you to change the device to an IDE device (or similar) so it can be seen by XP on the install.

I have also had to select F6 on start up on MANY occasions. A lot of technicians I speak to say that this is not required as XP sorts it all out. (It does not!). I have literally just proven that with a desktop and attempted to install a SATA hard drive and the system simply sits there at the 'Setup is starting Windows' page.

When I hit the F6 button, at the right time the systems prompts for the software and this is supplied by Floppy Disc. The system reads it and hey presto XP installs without a hitch (proving the fact that the F6 button IS required in some installations). XP looks for a FDD for the installation.

I have a Laptop Novatech L51AI0 (and the drivers disc) but it does not have a FDD. The system halts at the page (as above) as the HDD is SATA. I have been told by a Novatech Technician that I need the recovery disc, so I purchased it. Surprise surprise it does not work (as it looks as though it is simply an XP Disc).

I have even purchased a USB FDD in an attempt to utilise the FDD to see if I can halt the installation and try to install the relevant drivers, but I can't as the device is not recognised.

However, there must be more drivers on Vista as I have ran the install for Vista and the system kicks in and begins to load.

I appreciate that the easy option is to install Vista (but that is not what my friend wants with this laptop, they want XP).

I have used formatting software (disc is recognised) and the disc is recognised in BIOS.

So, any ideas out there so I can install the OS on a SATA HDD on a notebook without any Chipset drivers on Floppy Disc? Also don't forget the recovery CD I have just purchased for this laptop does not work either.:wall:

[oojimmyflip1]

Ignore the windows xp f6 and let the loading continue when windows reports that there is no hard disk on the system you get the option to exit or press escape if you press the escape button you should be able to see the sata hard disk ready to partition and format, this seems to work on my corporate windows xp service pk 1 disk but not on any of my service pack 2 disks. strange because sata drives were not about when service pk 1 came out.

[Pendragonuk]

The crux of the problem is Windows XP. It is 10 years old and seriously out of date. No one should be installing it! I would not recommend Windows Vista but Windows 7 is very good on older hardware. Much better than Windows XP or Vista. If you don't want to go to the expense of purchasing a new copy of Windows, Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) or PCLinuxOS (http://www.pclinuxos.com/) would be a good option. Don't forget that is the laptop is new or has changed hardware it will need a new licensed copy of Windows. Don't forget that using "copied" version of Windows isn't the type of thing you do to a friend...

[geek-i-am]

I've installed XP many times on many laptops and never had this problem, I tend to always use an SP3 disc though. If you can, I'd recommend embedding some drivers into an XP installation disc, meaning that hopefully it should be able to detect the sata drive.

Nlite can embed programs & drivers into installation discs:
http://www.nliteos.com/

I dare say there are many others out there to, but it does mean having to have the driver files handy.

[system7]

This is an old thread, but the answer is that modern laptops are sometimes not XP compatible out of the box. This is because the bios setting is defaulted to AHCI SATA 2 mode. You have to go into the bios and find and set IDE compatability mode and XP then installs with no issue. :)