New install of XP - No hard drive found

[dm1225]

This is what happens when I try to reinstall winxp on another used computer (dell 8400 with a SATA drive)

The windows setup screen appears and loads files.

The next screen says welcome to setup and offers three options .
1-to setup XP press enter. 2 To repair XP press R 3 to exit without installing XP press F3
I press enter and the following message comes up.

Setup did not find any hard disk installed in your computer. Make sure any hard disk drives are powered on and properly connected. And any disk related configuration is connect. ect. press F3 to quit. It does this if I try repair also.

The drive works since I can boot the PC without the CD. It has the command.com on the C:
I checked the connections to the HD and Motherboard.

Any help would be welcome

[kc0arf]

Hello,

Windows XP does not know how to interact with your SATA hard drive, and/or controller.

When you first start booting the XP CD-ROM, you will see a little message splash along the bottom of the screen... press F6 to for driver diskette... or something along those lines.

You will need to track down the particular driver for the SATA interface. I would look on Dell's Website for instructions. Go to their support page, and enter in your service tag number, and you should be presented with a number of options.

This is the same problem that caused problems with Windows 2K and SCSI interfaces.

Christian

[dm1225]

What is the option if I do not have a floppy drive?

[sallyhughes]

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.

[Chaky]

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?)

[sallyhughes]

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

[jbennet]

note : you can use cdrs or flash keys with Vista

[sallyhughes]

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!

[Chaky]

I wish you a floppy drive.

[jbennet]

lol u may actually have to buy one

[dewabo]

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

[jbennet]

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

[Chaky]

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

[mark stanley]

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.

[Chaky]

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.

[mark stanley]

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.

[jbennet]

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

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

[Chaky]

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.

[afghanguy]

you need nothing at all
no need of hard disk nothing

all you need to do is
restart your pc
press del or f10 to go to bios
change the sata hard disk
or just disable it
thats all
reinsert your windows xp cd
all boom
there you go
cheers mate

[afghanguy]

comon guys
change the bios setting
disable sata
and xp will detect your hard disk

[Chaky]

Thread is 18 months old, man.

[LkGrgGrrl]

This is what happens when I try to reinstall winxp on another used computer (dell 8400 with a SATA drive)

I just had the same problem. I pressed F2 during setup to enter my BIOS configuration. It might be a different option for you as I don't have a dell.

Within BIOS, I went to my Hard Drive properties and changed it from SATA mode to Compatibility mode. After that I saved and exited and then rebooted and this time the CD saw the Hard Drive.

Please note that I don't have a floppy and I didn't have to download any drivers. I hope this is easier for you.

[ajit1984]

At this point you could get a USB floppy (or borrow one) and do it that way.

Otherwise, you could pull the drive and plug it directly into your main machine and copy over the driver to another partition and then select that partition as the source of the driver.

Or you could ... well do one of those things.
SNIP

[tCap]

Thread is 18 months old, man.

It worked perfectly for me. Thanks to everyone who posted.

[bobmoto]

note : you can use cdrs or flash keys with Vista

an other way of diong it , is to go into the Bios, disable the SATA , start the install, it will detect the drive and start the istall of win XP, then after the install, reboot to the bios and reanable the sata drive and voila!

[butchh]

Do not take me too seriously as I am from the age of abacus.

I recently installed a Samsung HD322HJ-SP into an ASUS A8V mobo and had issues similar to yours (no HDD recognized). The primitive Samsung website had universal solutions which did not help. ASUS did something similar. To get to the chase, I bought a WD and the installation had no hangups and was a piece of cake.

I am off sick from work and found the web is rife with similar situations, we basically have a pissing contest between Samsung and ASUS and noone has addressed the problem directly. To further complicate the issue it appears there are more than one version of the HDD and not all are having problems. From what I have seen the most likely bad one(s) are those of OEM type. Most other mobo's are having little or no issues.

Just my 2 cents.

[smokeysa]

Hi Guys,

In reply to all your advice which didnt work because my HP nx7300 SATA drivers can not unpack to a file location but only to floppy disk. Instead I did the following in the BIOS setup.

Go to Bios setup and then to system configuration (it might be called something else in your bios). Look for a SATA setting here that is enabled, it may be called something like "SATA embedded mode" or something of this sort. Disable this option and the Boot from your XP disk again.
You should then see all drives and partitions.

[AgytowblinkerZ]

i was try to disable AHCI drive on my bios,,finally it's 100% worked...