Hardware Knowledgebase - How do I install Windows XP on a Serial ATA (SATA) drive?

I had the same problem, trying to install Xp(SP2). i would get to the point of install windows but no drive was detected. what every you selected was a (Microsoft)BSOD. I finally had changed the SATA setting in bios from RAID to IDE. Then windows installed normal. I will change setting back to raid once Win XP is installed. Hope this helps others with this same problem

Hello, thanx for the help, the key F6 was the solution , this`post is for help to David, it happens I just received my notebook from Dell, the drivers for your Hard Disk are in the DVD of drivers than I supose it arrives with your notebook, find a program called NLITE, by google download it, and use NLITE with a WinXP cd, to incorporate the driver of your disk, remember NLITE is really good, and Good Look, with your pc.

I've recently purchased a dell inspiron 1525 laptop.
It came with a sata hard drive and and windows vista installed.
I would like to remove vista and install windows xp pro.

i don't have a floppy drive.

After I've pressed F6 to provide drivers for the SATA drive would be possible to load the sata drivers
from the cd/dvd rom instead?

Please advise.

This is solved by entering the bios settings and disable the "sata native mode"

Hi Bros,

I really need help on installing WinXP Pro onboard SATA Seagate 40Gbs using Gigabyte GA945PS3. Ive tried several look-like-ok sata drivers (F6 - floppy)but still dissappointed. Plz sort some lights! Thanks

thanks to nvidia chips sets who makes the chips all are same in every diffrent motherboards brands
example nvidia nforece 4 sli *16 is same in msi,asus,gigabyte motherboards so if u want drivers for the SATA RAID U CAN DOWNLOAD IT FROM MSI WEBSITES THIS WILL SOLVE THE PROBLEM GUYZ TRUST ME

It dosen't work for me. I tried to push F6, bunt nothing happend. I saw that somwere in BIOS or on the boot screen the hdd must appear. It doesen't appear, so when I push F6 ...
Please tell me how can I make it work? For 2days my computer stands as a piece of furniture. Thx!

On SATA XP install, do I hold down F6 continuously or just press it once?

i have a hard drive sata .
but it speed is very low
and my main bord is giga 8s655fx
what is different betten raid and ide
when i chang in my bios start up

which do i have to select

I got a gigabite motherboard, and i had trouble installing the SATA drivers in the beginning. However, i am using only 1 SATA HD, so in the bios settings, i changed the 2 settings (that are by default set to RAID) to ATA. IT then worked with no probs.

I have a problem installing windows xp on my sata harddrive also. however, i have tried everything that came to my mind, including installing drivers for the sata hdd. for an idea of what ive tried, please go to this link: http://www.cybertechhelp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=89052

does somebody know what my problem is, if it is software or hardware related, and what i can do to fix the problem?

Moral of the story is no matter how unused, unwanted, obsolete, or kicked around the 3.5" floppy is IT IS so very cheap and easy to install into any computer system that you would have to be a complete fool not to install one...and don't tell me cost is an issue... $9.00 (thats two large coffee's at star*ucks.)

SeeyawhenIseeya

i have 2 sata drives but one is 250gb and the other 100gb will this work?

do i need 2 sata drive so it works to its full potential?

but how can u install the drive if ur computer dont even have a floppy drive. lol and now day ppls dont build computer with floppy disk drive any more. :(

HOW TO INSTALL WINDOWS XP ON ABIT N-FORCE NF7-S2 SATA RAID:
BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE:
* You need 2 SATA hard drives of equal size (preferably identical)
* SET ALL BIOS SETTINGS to ENABLE SATA RAID HARDWARE and FLOPPY DISK "A"
* Just after POST (Power On Self Test) screen, you get a RAID POST screen with an option to press the F10 key to enter RAID options. PRESS F10.
* Here's the critical bit: CONFIGURE RAID for "STRIPE MIRRORING" (RAID 0+1). N-FORCE NF7-S2 malfunctions on some other RAID options. But STRIPE MIRRORING is best for most people anyway.
* Next critical bit: You must have a FLOPPY DISK DRIVE. A special SATA driver floppy disk came with ABIT N-FORCE NF7-S2, for use during WINDOWS XP installation.
* BOOT FROM CD with Windows XP disk in drive
* IMMEDIATELY when the blue screen appears, text flashes across the bottom saying e.g. "PRESS F6 to install special drivers..." PRESS F6 and wait a moment
* On the options screen, press "S", put the floppy in the drive and press "Enter"
* Select the SATA driver for Windows XP
* Press Enter
* Press "S" again, then "Enter"
* Select the N-Force chipset driver for Windows XP
* Press Enter
* Continue as normal installing Windows XP.

I'll post screenshots of the process on my website in the next few weeks.

http://www.slyman.org/

The page will be posted at:
http://www.slyman.org.uk/right_projects_computer_hardware.php

hi , I have not been able to make it work ... i have the driver cd but i dont know how to make the floppy.... can someone help me please ,

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

ive got an Abit NF7-S2 (nForce2 chipset) and a 200gigs maxtor diamondmax10 SATA disk as secondary atm. and a 80gigs maxtor diamondmax9 as primary. because of the chipset i dont need to install any sata drivers (i think) cause the winXP home (+ sp1) install detects the disk perfectly, and the install goes whitout any probs.
but when it reboots it comes whit an error, im not sure its exactly the same in the english version of windows, "Failure during loading of the operative system" ("Fejl ved indlæsning af operativsystem" in danish), and it wont boot...
ive tried litterally EVERYTHING!
i even tried using MaxBLAST3 to copy the OS from the ide disk to the sata :S
what have i done wrong?

It was not so difficult installing Windows XP (with no servicepack) on a SATA drive.
Mainboard: Gigabyte GA-K8VT800 mainborad Harddisk: Maxtor 120GB SATA drive.
What I did:
1 - open command prompt on an existing system.
2 - format a:
3 - put the Gigabyte driver cdrom in
4 - cd to directoyry bootdrv on cdrom
drive
5 - run menu.exe
6 - choose the right driver. VIA SATA in my case. (the driver floppy will be created)
7 - setup winxp with F6
8 - press E and choose both the Windows XP SATA and ATA driver
9 - continue installing and create the partitions you want
10 - too bad I get drive letter H: and I: instead of C: and D:
11 - reboot the computer and repeat step 7, 8 and 9.
12 - Now it is drive C: and D:
Good luck with the rest

ok to answer all your questions listen up. when installing win xp our xp 64 you have to have a floppy drive to install the drivers for your serail ata hard drive so that windows can reconize the drive and let you set up the install properlly, you will find these drivers on your motherboared disk. If you are running other ide hard drivers you will want to disable them in the bois frist so that windows wont reconize them during set up because by default windwos set up will want to write the mbr to ide 0 masters. disableing ide 0 will make windows write the mbr on the serail drive. after install is complite renable ide 0. after the install is complite and you boot into windows for the frist time you will want to intall the motherboard drivers if you are using a gigabyte mother boared go and download the newst via reana drives for xp 64 they have beta drivers for the 4 in 1 they alos have xp 64 dirves for ac 97 sound. installing both xp and xp 64 this way windows will be able to recononize the serial ata hard even if you dont install the serial ata drives when u get to windows. install them if you want

How do you do this if your computer has no floppy drive?

I have the same problem with installing fresh Windows 64-bit. All the disks containing drivers I've attempted to use, I've been told, are corrupt. =( Does this mean I have to resort to 32 bit??

Is the same that other users?
Exist drivers for sata raid for windows xp 64 bits edition?

I have the same problem with installing fresh Windows 64-bit. All the disks containing drivers I've attempted to use, I've been told, are corrupt. =( Does this mean I have to resort to 32 bit??

hi
had problems loading xp onto sata drive;hit f6 loaded sil drivers still got bloo screen..managed to load xp via sata host adapter,but still couldnt plug sata connection directly into board
finally relized u also have have to copy sata bootup drivers from m/board disc onto floppy... works fine now.
gigayte k8n-pro
3.2 64bit

I dont have a floppy drive, but i have an onboard SATA raid. Windows install doesnt see any hd's (i have one 120). Is there a way to install windows and load the SATA driver without a floppy?

Do not put the floppy in the drive before Windows XP install, it seems to corrupt the automatic reading...
Download latest IAA RAID driver from Intel web site...

Hope helps anyone !

Oh Man I have the same problem as this. Spent the last week formating the drives. I have a D865GBFLK Intel motherboard and 2 60GB SATA hard drives connected thru seperate chanels to the motherboard. When I boot up I see both drives listed and they appear in the BIOS, but windows only sees 1. Sometime s the second appearded, but then it dispears. I also had another Maxtor conected via EIDE which worked fine. In the installation process I was unable to load XP to C drive. Instead it goes to E drive. Has anyone found a solution to this... Im so fed up with this I just put both my drives up on Ebay and am about to resort back to EIDE.
Thx

We installed WinXP on a new system with one SATA hard drive and a DVD rewriter. The motherboard is a SOYO SY-KT600. The drive letter that was assigned to the SATA drive was "E". How can we change it to be "C"? There are at least two programs that must go on this computer that will only load to "C".

I have a similar problem with my GA-K8NPRO except when I made the "reconmeded" changes to my BIOS the pc rebooted and has been dead ever since. I don't even get a POST. I have no clue what to do and I am hesitant to Flash the BIOS, that's if I can even get to the floppy now. HELP

I have tried using the IAA RAID drivers that came with my gigabyte 8ik1100 CD but when Windows XP setup reboots it says,... error loading operating system.
I have tried all of the SERIAL/RAID drivers but nothing seems to detect the sata (Maxtor 80 gb)after is reboots to start installing Windows XP. Any suggestions?

Eureka! On the Gigabyte CD there is a section (d:\chipset\IAARAID\) that contains the Intel Application accelerator Raid version, and it has an executable named "F6 Install 2600.exe". It is used to create a driver disket to use on a fresh installation of Win2K.

As EVERYBODY knows in here, even if you do all the right things, like setting the BIOS right, pressing F6 and supplying ALL the different versions you find of GOOD drivers, Windows 2000/XP may be blind to your SATA RAID array. Here's how I made it work : I put my two SATA drive in a RAID 1 (mirror) array. I installed a standard ATA drive on the primary and installed WIN2K server on that disk. After installation, Win2K would still not detect my SATA drives, even if I supplied the right drivers. That was until I installed the "INTEL APPLICATION ACCELERATOR RAID" supplied on the Gygabyte CD. Right then Windows started detecting my SATA drives. After that it was just a matter of using Symantec Ghost to clone my ATA disk to my SATA RAID array, changing the boot order in the BIOS (and/or removing the ata drive) and rebooting on the SATA...
So, how is one to be supposed to supply the "Intel accelerator thing" during windows installation... would it be possible ?

If you allready tried the 3112 SIL drivers versions 10047, 10032, 10040, etc.. Don't spend 8 hours on the thing like I did with my Gigabyte 8KNXP :
1- Configure RAID array of 2 SATA drives
2- Configure 1 std drive on primary ATA
3- Install O/S on ATA
4- Install all Motherboard drivers, including any SATA RAID drivers and the "Intel accelerator RAID".
5- Check that you can see your SATA drive (it will look like only one drive if RAID 1 is used).
6- Reboot with a Symantec Ghost disk (or other cloning software) and clone (disk-to-disk) the ATA drive to the SATA array.
7- Change your BIOS boot order so that SATA boots before ATA.
8- Unplug the ATA drive and try to boot on the SATA.
9- You may remove or reformat the SATA drive.

I FOUND THE PROPA DRIVER AND IT WORKS :)
You can find it @ http://homepage.ntlworld.com/michael.mcclay/Drivers/SATA/3x12_x86_win_rdvr-10032.zip

Do the boot, F6 for extra driver, use floppy with the driver on.

Took me 2 days to find this baby :)

After hours of dorking around with a WD1200 - and loading the drivers during Windows setup, I found that I had to enable LBA and ATA in the bios. Make sure you check this.

Can someone with experience with the actual hardware post a fix? I am tired of these people posting the fixes from the companies faq's which are wrong! Only a person who actual has the hardware knows this does not work. I just tired of people posting fixes that they dont know works because they never did the setup them selfs but post anyways so they can look smart. People that actually has hands on experience fixing this issue only please!

Who the hell still have floppy drives in their machines.. I cant press F6 and install from floppyy.. h"#¤"#%

I can't install windows xp 64 bit.On the blue screen windows is reading from floppy and says file corrupt but if i install normal windows xp they are working.What should i do ? Motherboard : Asus k8v deluxe,200 gb maxtor,

i just got the sata working for windows xp setup on a gigabyte 85655FX for a client. download drivers here:
http://tw.giga-byte.com/Motherboard/Support/Driver/Driver_GA-8S655FX.htm
select download "SATA RAID Driver", unzip it, copy all files/folders in extracted sis180\diskimage to the root dir of a floppy disk and put it in floppy drive before windows xp setup starts. setup will automaticly load it, no need for f6 or selecting which driver to use.

I hit F6 at the right time, installed the SATA driver for my Seagate Baracuda 160gig 8mb cache, then proceeded with setup, yet XP didn't pick up the hard drive 2 or 3 screens after the SATA driver was installed.

Confirmed, the Gigabyte drivers do not work, however drivers from the manufacturer's website (Silicon Image) worked fine.

Even after getting the raid drivers from the manufacturer's driver CD, hit F6 then load the appropriate drivers,
On hitting ENTER to install Windows, it does nothing, no matter what key I hit, the windows installation does not continue.
Does anyone have any ideas?

This worked for me, and yet I have problems. I started with 2 SATA drives, a 120G and a 60G, and ended up with only a C: with 105G. How does that happen?

Encountered this problem with a Gigabyte 81K1100(rev 2.0) board. Flashing the BIOS to version FC (available from gigabyte's site) corrected the problem. Note that upgrading to bios version FD did not work, even though it is a later release.

Interestingly enuf, the raid drivers provided on the site for the express purpose of loading during XP setup always caused an error.

Yes, the Gigabyte drivers ARE a problem. I think it relates to the naming of them...they match the driver names of some of the generic drivers that Setup automatically loads. Reference Microsoft's KB Article #225125. Unfortunately, I still haven't figured a way around it even after reading the article...

this might work if you have a floppy drive installed what about when you dont have a floppy drive or disk. but have the drivers on another cdrom? That doesnt work

Users of gigabyte motherboards may find that the provided drivers, as well as drivers available on the gigabyte site, do not work.