Windows XP Installation Error: No Disk Drive?

[SlimNatey]

Hi,I have a problem..I just tried to reformat and install windows XP home edition, and upon coming to the screen of "Repair" or "Install fresh copy" I received an error reporting:

Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer.
Make sure any hard disk drives are powered on and properly connected to your computer, and that any disk-related hardware configuration is correct. This may involve running a manufacturer-supplied diagnostic or setup program.
Setup cannot continue. To quit setup, press F3.

I have no idea why it would be saying this, I'm using the same computer now 30 seconds later than when I was trying to install windows.

Currently, I'm using Windows Professional x64 (this is the reason I want home, I hate not having any drivers for webcams, printers, and the like) Asus A8V-Deluxe motherboard and the harddrive in question is a Western Digital 160gb, 7200rpm, 8mb buffer SATA drive.

I've tried flashing the BIOS, making sure the OnChip SATA driver Boot ROM was enabled, I've took the comptuer apart, the connections are snug..

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

[goldeagle2005]

You will have this problem if you have a SATA hard drive.

What you need to do is insert the disk labelled "SATA driver disk" (or something like that), and when setup asks you to "Press F6 to install a third party SCSI or RAID driver", press F6, and follow the onscreen prompts.

Note that the SATA disk will be a floppy you received with your motherboard. It may be labelled "RAID driver disk" or something....

[SlimNatey]

Could the SATA disk be a cd? I have the motherboard support cd.. but no floppy, as you described..

[goldeagle2005]

Could the SATA disk be a cd? I have the motherboard support cd.. but no floppy, as you described..

I doubt it. Although yu could try it. The reason the SATA drivers come on a floppy is that generally when people install Windows from a CD, it uses up the only CD drive on the system.

However, you could browse the CD and if you see something as "SATA Driver", copy them to a floppy and repeat the procedure suggested above.

[SlimNatey]

I explored my support cd for the mobo, and I did find drivers for the SATA raid controller.. but now, since I'm a total noob at this sort of thing, I don't know what to put on a disk. Do I put the whole director labed "sata driver" or do I just copy the windows xp driver directory? or just the installer?

Once again, thanks for the help!

[goldeagle2005]

I explored my support cd for the mobo, and I did find drivers for the SATA raid controller.. but now, since I'm a total noob at this sort of thing, I don't know what to put on a disk. Do I put the whole director labed "sata driver" or do I just copy the windows xp driver directory? or just the installer?

Once again, thanks for the help!

Open the directory labelled SATA driver. If it's a self extracting archive, just extract the contents to a floppy. If the folder contains files (*.ini, *.sys, *.cab etc), just copy these files to the floppy.

[cristyb]

This discussion is the same dilemma that I am having and the posts do not conclude with whether or not the problem was solved. Did your suggestion work? I am trying to reinstall Winxp on a soyo dragon system-AMD Athlon mobo- and I press the F6, as directed. The mobo only came with a CD for drivers which, as you said, won't work. I downloaded all the files from the CD with reference to SATA on a floppy and tried them all when directed by win set up. All of them resulted in the error message that it could not detect TEXTSETUP.OEM. There is an application file on the CD which referred to SATA directory but it was bigger than the floppy could download (1.85MB). Could this be what I need? and if so, how do I get it on floppy? Or, is there no hope for this problem? Any suggestion? Thanks, Cristy