Hi, all! New to the forum. Just got myself a Dell Precision 690 with a 2.33 Xeon Quad Core in it. I'm trying to install XP x64, but I'm having a big problem. The motherboard has an Intel AHCI SATA controller on it, you can run it in either ATA or AHCI mode. I want to run AHCI mode, so in setup you have to press F6 and install the drivers for AHCI controller. I can do that fine, and then I'm able to see my hard drive and make partitions and format them.

But when it comes time to copy the files, it first tries to copy the AHCI controller files off the floppy disk. The main file is called iaStor.sys. It's the first file it tries to copy, and every time it tries to, it fails. It says, "Setup cannot copy the file: iaStor.sys". I sit there and watch it access the floppy drive and it won't copy it, and because of that I can't complete installation. If I run the SATA controller in ATA mode, then everything works fine and I don't even need a driver disk, but that's not what I paid for. I know AHCI is a lot better and faster, I want to be able to use it. Does anyone have any ideas what I could do to fix this?

download a program called NLITE

it helps you slisptream (integrate) drivers, service packs, hotfixes into a new windows cd and to customise it. It will then let you burn it as an .iso

SOLUTION:
Put drivers in both root directory A:/ and in A:/$OEM$/TEXTMODE/ directory.

or use nlite to put it on the cd...