Help me..... Please? ..... Anyone?

[lidonnit]

So.... I tried to be a Dexter and sort of failed.. I think.

I just went and bought the following:

AMD 64 - 4400+
Gigabyte K8NXP - SLi
300Gig Maxtor SATA (6L300SO)
2Gig Kingston DDR400 RAM
ATI Radeon X850 Platinum Pro

and the rest of what you need for a new computer.

I cannot Install windows XPSP1 on my hard drive..... My harddrive is detected as 131 gig and everytime setup finishes, my pc re-boots and starts the setup again??? My Harddrive is plugged into the yellow SATA1 port and everything else seems to be working. I can't find the "Actual" drive in BIOS anywhere either. I know this is pretty broad but can someone point me in the right direction to diagnose this problem?

Cheers
Trev 🙁

 

[Ian]

You have a bit of a problem. The thing is, Windows XP pre service pack 1 does NOT support Serial ATA. So, there is a method of installing the drivers during the installation of windows. In this way windows will recognize the drive and the install will work. Let me just type it up in a way that will be understandable.

OK awesome, someone has already done it for me... and with pictures to make it easier for you, ive done this several times, so feel free to ask questions if you have any problems.

http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/faq/sata_detect.html

So basically you need to get the drivers for your drive and then put them on a disk, if you dont have a floppy drive then a cd will probably work. Then follow the instructions for what to do during windows install.


-Ian

 

[pat]

You have a bit of a problem. The thing is, Windows XP pre service pack 1 does NOT support Serial ATA. So, there is a method of installing the drivers during the installation of windows. In this way windows will recognize the drive and the install will work. Let me just type it up in a way that will be understandable.

OK awesome, someone has already done it for me... and with pictures to make it easier for you, ive done this several times, so feel free to ask questions if you have any problems.

http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/faq/sata_detect.html

So basically you need to get the drivers for your drive and then put them on a disk, if you dont have a floppy drive then a cd will probably work. Then follow the instructions for what to do during windows install.


-Ian

That's simply not true.. You should learn a thing or 2 about SATA and nforce4 controller...

 

[pat]

So.... I tried to be a Dexter and sort of failed.. I think.

I just went and bought the following:

AMD 64 - 4400+
Gigabyte K8NXP - SLi
300Gig Maxtor SATA (6L300SO)
2Gig Kingston DDR400 RAM
ATI Radeon X850 Platinum Pro

and the rest of what you need for a new computer.

I cannot Install windows XPSP1 on my hard drive..... My harddrive is detected as 131 gig and everytime setup finishes, my pc re-boots and starts the setup again??? My Harddrive is plugged into the yellow SATA1 port and everything else seems to be working. I can't find the "Actual" drive in BIOS anywhere either. I know this is pretty broad but can someone point me in the right direction to diagnose this problem?

Cheers
Trev 🙁

Gigabyte has the bad idea to set SATA controller to RAID by default in BIOS. Since you are not using RAID, but controller/connectors are set as such, it create confusion.

Nforce4 support SATA natively, no matter the OS used. To make it work, goes in BIOS and disable RAID for the SATA controller, or, for each connector individually. See, you can have 2 SATA HDD using as single drive on SATA1 and SATA2 while SATA3 and SATA4 used for a RAID array.

I'm not sure, but I think the the option is something like : RAID or BASE. BASE should be used, or anything that disable RAID.

Next thng you should look is, if your board has 2 IDE controller. One will be the nvidia one and the other, some third party controller, likely make by SIL. The nvidia controller is the one that should be used. Once set properly, your HDD will be listed at POST screen with the other IDE devices, like CDROM or DVD.. The other one, being a third party controller, using either the PCI or PCIe bus to communicate with the system. This one will need drivers no matter how the controller is used.(IDE or RAID)

SATA is an interface, not a controller. The controller is the nvidia one, that support both ATA and SATA interface natively. If it wouldnt, you'd need drivers for your CDROM or DVD ..

While the drive might be listed as 130 Gb max, once installed you'll be able to partition and format the unused space. This is an OS limit and SP2 does allow hdd to be bigger than 130 gigs. By the way, I don't really recommend one big OS partition that uses the whole HDD.. Let say XP crashed and you have to reformat the whole thing... and not everything is backed up.... If you have the 130 gb for the OS, and the remaining for your personnal stuff, having XP to crash will require only a reformatting of the OS partition, leaving the other partition intact..


I think it is about time that peoples stop to simply post "use drivers" for any SATA hdd problem.. First, controller now support the SATA interface natively and adding the wrong set of drivers simply make the thing worst.

And one don't have a clue about the chipset the motherboard uses, it cannot simply get useful answer and will more likely mess the thing aven more.

 

[lidonnit]

Well......... With all this help... she is finally going! Bios recognises that the drive is a 279 GIG drive but obviously windows still cant. It thinks its a 137 gig.

I created a 75 gig partition, with the intention of creating another 2 of about 112 each. Does anyone think this is a bad idea??

I just have to get windows to recognise it now. I'm going to run XP 64 and see if that has any benefits.

Thanks for all the help guys. Much appreciated.

 

[bagg]

Update your machine to SP2.....that should fix the problem with the OS recognizing the full capacity of the drive.

 

[morg]

i never tried this but is could fix the problem, use a sp2 winxp cd which you can download... it should work with your 300go sata drive and save you the sp2 download and install...

unless you have a copy or do not wish to use sp2

 

[lidonnit]

The problem I got is the XP that is loaded on the machine is the very first XP version and it's a jerry version. So I cant download any updates from Microsoft. Do I have to buy an original copy from windows or does anyone know where I can get a copy of SP2 from? 😳

 

[wiseblud]

The link from M$ was way too long....

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=846