asus a8v vs raptor wd740 vs winxp vs my patience! who will win?

[webbo]

:mad: i have an asus a8v motherboard and i'm trying to set up xp on my new western digital raptor wd740 hd but xp doesnt recognise the hd.
so is anyone out there who can tell me have i got the wrong parts, is there a strange install/setup prior to xp or is it the fact i'm ill and not seeing the obvious.
by the way the hd is oem and i'm trying to set it up as sata as most techs would have gathered.
please help i'm losing the plot and i might just eat my own arm!!!!!!!! :eek:

[Cup of Squirrel]

The first problem that comes to my head is maybe your hard drive is not connected properly, or your IDE/SATA cable is not connected properly to your motherboard. Just check they're not half connected, and remember to be gentle ;D

[webbo]

thanks, but the comp knows its there as it can see it in the bios when i try to select the boot up sequence i'll try to make sure that it is connected.
at first i thought it was because my mother board has four sata ports, two standard (black) and two raid (red) but switching over has made no difference.
also there is mention of fasttrak 378 driver which comes up as no bios installed for it?
and the problem is the xp boot up after you select enter for a fresh install thats when the message appears that there is no hard drives connected or drivers arn't installed
has any of this made any sense?
thanks for your time

[nizzy1115]

thanks, but the comp knows its there as it can see it in the bios when i try to select the boot up sequence i'll try to make sure that it is connected.
at first i thought it was because my mother board has four sata ports, two standard (black) and two raid (red) but switching over has made no difference.
also there is mention of fasttrak 378 driver which comes up as no bios installed for it?
and the problem is the xp boot up after you select enter for a fresh install thats when the message appears that there is no hard drives connected or drivers arn't installed
has any of this made any sense?
thanks for your time

do you have the jumper settings as a slave drive? and your master as master drive?

[nizzy1115]

did you also format the drive in windows? i had to do that for my wd.

[webbo]

ar now i did remove the jumper because it's oem, i couldn't tell what was master and i wanted to set it up as a single drive also, i would format it if windows could see it but it doesnt seem to exist tried the check new hardware and it dosent come up on the device manager.
thank you for your support
have you anyother suggestions? :cry:

[nizzy1115]

ar now i did remove the jumber beacuse it's oem i couldn't tell what was master and i wanted to set it up as a single drive also i would format it if windows could see it but it doesnt seem to exist tried the check new hardware and that was no good
thank you for your support
have you ny other suggestions? :cry:

Dont remove the jumper, look on the back and set it as slave if you want it as a second drive and make sure your old one is set do master. If you want it as a the only drive in your computer and want to install windows again then put it as master and dont hook your other drive up yet.

[webbo]

yea but i dont which jumper setup to put it on have you an idea?
there is no picture or notices on the label ethier?
arrrggh!!!!!!

[webbo]

:cheesy: aha i have looked on the western digital site and found something i missed ealier it says:
Cause:
The drive may not be detected during the installation of Windows because you have not yet loaded the drivers for your EIDE, SCSI, or SATA controller.

Resolution:
During the initial installation of Windows, you will need to press F6 almost immediately when "Setup is inspecting your hardware..." appears on the screen. You will then be asked to provide any mass storage controller drivers you may have. At this point, use the drivers supplied by your controller manufacturer. After performing the steps above, the drive will be recognized and the install should continue without problems.

which i thought i had but maybe its the wrong one, so i will try to find a driver from asus for the sata drive, (oh please let it work) :mrgreen:
maybe i'm just stupid :rolleyes:

[nizzy1115]

yea but i dont which jumper setup to put it on have you an idea?
there is no picture or notices on the label ethier?
arrrggh!!!!!!

here check this site out www.wdc.com/en/library/eide/2579-001037.pdf hope it helps with the jumpers

[nizzy1115]

here check this site out www.wdc.com/en/library/eide/2579-001037.pdf hope it helps with the jumpers

ok good call, let us know how it works

[webbo]

getting there thanks for the help i will let you know?

[nizzy1115]

getting there thanks for the help i will let you know?

great and good to hear. Long live the patience! :cheesy:

[webbo]

well an update, i removed the slave drive and then copied some fast trak drivers onto a floppy then i put the little jumper back on the hard drive on the setting i thought would be best.
any way did this very late last night and didn't get time to look through it or sort it out properly.
but we have progress!!!!!!!!..........almost :(
after the small changes i change the bios again to read the sata hard drive and during self test the computer asked for me to press ctrl&f to set up the fast-trak controller so i did and it was there, my new raptor and so i set up a striping array and then continued to load windows xp setup.
when it got to the blue screen at the bottom of the screen it pops up "press F6 to setup a third party scsi or raid etc, so i did and it didn't find anthing so insert the floppy and hit enter and up comes the frasttrak drivers, load them and yea!!!!! :cheesy: windows found the hard drive!!! at last!
anyway left it overnight to format the drive and lo and behold blue screen says cant copy files or something(i don't know i was gonna be late for work so i will try again tonight and let you all know how its going! (what a right kafuffle!) :eek:

[webbo]

Hello peeps
well I haven’t touched my computer for ages as works has taken control of my life for quite a while, anyway the latest is that I finally sat down to tackle the hard drive problem once and for all I tried using win 2000 but it seemed to crash and I’ve been trying partition magic (for about 5mins) and nothing so far so I went back to the old F6 routine with the drivers on the floppy.
now considering that the MB detects the sata drive and so does windows when you in it, it seems when I run xp setup and do the whole F6 thingy I get a choice of drivers they are;
WIN2003PROMISE SATA378 (tm) CONTROLLER
WINXPPROMISE SATA378 (tm) CONTROLLER
WIN2000PROMISE SATA378 (tm) CONTROLLER
WINNTPROMISE SATA378 (tm) CONTROLLER
So I chose the XP version and I get the following message;
"File\winxp\ulsata.sys caused an unexpected error (18) at line 2108 in d: \xpsp1\base\boot\setup\OEMdisk.c." now someone please for the love of all things good and great in the world! Can some tell me what this means and what I need to do to sort it out as I am gong mad thank you! :eek: :eek:

[webbo]

Hooray!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You wouldn't believe it but I’ve done it, but wow what a nightmare
In the end the process I used was this;
went to the western digital site looking for help or advice and found a downloadable program for WD hard drives that will let you create an additional boot drive by copying all files and apps onto that drive, so I got a little 20Gb IDE hard drive and put a fresh copy of win xp on it, (as my other drive had loads of crap on it and it would’ve taken ages) then I loaded the program (called lifeguard) onto it, formatted the SATA drive and copied the files, (which includes win xp onto it, once it was done, I rebooted the pc with just the SATA drive plugged in and changed all the bios changes needed and hey presto!! my pc is now running from my new Raptor drive and wow what a difference in speed, (I mean I thought the difference from my IDE drive would be minor and I probably wouldn’t see a difference but when I started loading programs on like office xp pro it must have loaded it in no more then a minute) mind you I do have a Athlon 64 fx-55 chip and 1Gb of ram, but together they are quick. I was amazed and now it's done I want to thank Nizzy1115 for your help and to say my mood is one of joy and happiness, just need a decent GPU and another 2Gb of ram and I’ll bench mark it, (computers, why do we do it?) :cheesy: :cheesy: :cheesy: :cheesy: