New install of XP - No hard drive found

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I am in the same situation. And do not have a floppy drive on this laptop. Would appreciate any direction as to how to install the SATI driver when using the XP CD as the boot/install device.
Thanks.

sallyhughes

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3 posts since Jun 2007

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You must use floppy drive to load f6 drivers. PCMCIA Floppy, USB external floppy, on-board floppy.. it doesn't matter as long as it is floppy drive (Thank you, microsoft, for making modern computers useless without obsolete piece of hardware such as floppy drive. Ever heard of CDs?)

Postaholic

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After further hunting - i found this article which explains another option for those of us without floppy drives, thus unable to use F6

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Install-Windows-XP-On-SATA-Without-a-Floppy-F6-47807.shtml

sallyhughes

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note : you can use cdrs or flash keys with Vista

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Actually what started this hunt yesterday, is the request of a friend to strip off Vista and install XPPro. He hates it, won't use the functionality - he's an email, documents, webbrowser user only. So i am downgrading from Vista to XP. Wish me luck!

sallyhughes

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I wish you a floppy drive.

Postaholic

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lol u may actually have to buy one

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Newegg has a Sony internal floppy drive for 7.99+shipping.:)

dewabo

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148 posts since Apr 2007

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i paid £12 ($25!!!!!!!!) for one. apparently there "rare" now. and its £20 ($40!!!!!) for 10 floppy disks!!!!

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I got ~ 1/2 dozen drives laying around and god-knows-how-many floppy disks.
Reminders of good old 486 days.

Postaholic

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I have a floppy and am still getting a "no hard drives found" after installing the sata drivers from it. I can't figure this out and it is killing me. The cmos recognizes the drives on boot. Windows XP even tells me that the drivers it has are newer than those I have and I even tried loading those but still have the same problem.

mark stanley

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2 posts since Dec 2007

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Mark, If you are installing additional brand-new HDs, then bare in mind that you must create partition(s) and those partitions must be formatted in order to be used. Use disk management (right-click on my computer then click on "manage" and select disk management).

Otherwise, unpartitioned drives won't be visible in windows explorer.

Postaholic

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Mark, If you are installing additional brand-new HDs, then bare in mind that you must create partition(s) and those partitions must be formatted in order to be used. Use disk management (right-click on my computer then click on "manage" and select disk management).

Otherwise, unpartitioned drives won't be visible in windows explorer.

Actually, I tried this with my existing HDs ans then I purchased a new HD. I had a friend install XP on the new one (I sent my OS disk to him). When I got it back and tried to boot with it it went into a "reboot loop" (I am assuming because of chipset differences between my machine and his). I tried again to reinstall with my computer and got the same thing... "XP couldn't find any drives". When I plug it in and use it as a secondary drive... explorer sees it and I can use it but I still can't partition, fdisk or install XP on it. I am assuming that for some reason XP is NOT seeing my SATA drivers... but I get through the part where I use the floppy (F6) and install them and still...... nothing. I guess I will have to get another motherboard. Only problem is that mine is an ASUS SK8N 940 socket that is obsolete.... and I can't find one anywhere. I have an AGP graphics card and all the ones I find that will accept my CPU (Athalon 64 FX-51) are Socket 939 (which will work) but are for PCI only.

mark stanley

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um , have you actually enabled the disk in the BIOS?

new pcs generally come with all the disk channels apart from the IDE disabled

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XP bypasses BIOS HD detection. You can disable it in BIOS (giving we are not talking about primary disk with OS) and it will still be recognized as if it was enabled.

I had similar experience with my machine. The problem was with:

a) lack of legacy SATA drivers for XP setup.
b) nForce4 chipset SATA II mode bug. (it was set on SATA II mode)

What I did was:
(non SP XP)

- disabled HD in BIOS (otherwise it wouldn't format it)
- switched the jumper on HD to SATA I mode
- used (now, get this..) Silicon images f6 drivers. My mobo is ASUS A8N Sli with nForce4 chip. The CD that came with it contained nForce4 and Silicon Images SATA controller f6 drivers. The reason is that the same CD is shipped with A8N 32 Sli mobos that have implemented Silicon Images chip along side with nForce4, unlike mine, but for some reason, I was able to format my HD ONLY with SI drivers. Not NF4 drivers.

My advice to you is to:

- switch to SATA I mode (also called 1.5G)
- then try with regular boot-up. Differences with chipsets might be bypassed by OS. (have the mobo drivers ready)
- if that doesn't help, try disabling the HD in BIOS and then reinstall the OS. Do not format the disk. It might not be possible with the SATA drives vs. XP conflict.