Hi all, yesterday my brother kindly gave me a grand to build him a system (just the case and everything inside) this is what i got him...

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 64 bit Retail inc.fan (3 yr.warr.) Skt 754

Creative Soundblaster Audigy2 6.1 Surround Sound Card OEM

80 GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus9 SATA 7200rpm UDMA150 8MB Cache

512MB DDR400 PC3200 RAM (major brand)

Pioneer 16x 120-S Slotload DVD IDE oem

Pioneer DVR-107 DVD +/-R/RW Beige 8X IDE OEM (Drive only)

Coolermaster TAC-T01 Wave Master aluminium +2x fans USB, mic, audio firewire NO PSU

Abit KV8-MAX3 Skt754 VIA KT800 8xAGP + SATA RAID + Giga LAN +USB2 +F/Wire +6 ch. audio ATX

ThermalTake Butterfly 480W (Black) PurePower,8cm Case Fan+ Dual LED +Fan Speed Control,SATA Ready

Plus an Asus RX800 Pro 256mb ive yet to recieve from www.overclockers.co.uk...

Anyway, i built it all, it fell together nicely, everything pluged in, i plugged the SATA cable into the SATA 1 socket and used the SATA power cables from the PSU to power it, anyway...

I briefly fiddled about in the BIOS to set it up a bit, it doesnt detect the HDD, but i know why, because you need to install the SATA drivers from a floppy disk, right?

Ok, so i put the Windows XP Pro disk in, the blue screen comes out and it says "Would you like to install a 3rd partys SCSI or RAID Device, Press F6" (or something like that), i Press F6 and after a moment i get another screen saying "blah blah blah, press "S" if you want to install the drivers for this device" .....ok, so i put the floppy disk (which came with the mobo) entitled "SATA DRIVERS DISK" into the floppy drive, i press enter for it to detect it, and it then says.

"There are no drivers on this disk which relate to your device" (or something similar)

Huh?? Any help would be GREATLY appreciated, and he's kinda coming round tommorow to pick it up, so i need to get this fixed ASAP please.

RSVP ASAP!!!

Cheers :grinthumb

If you've plugged the HDD in the SATA-1 connector, it is connected to the Via southbridge & thus does not need to have a driver loaded prior to the XP install.

The SATA-3 to SATA-6 connectors are connected to the Silicon Image SATA controller & you would need to load the driver if you were planning on installing XP on a driver connected to those SATA ports.

so why when i try to install Windows does it halt and tell me i cant coz ive not got a HDD installed?

Try using the Via SATA drivers then ( maybe the ones on the Floppy are for the Silicone Image controller ).

Also, after the POST, do you see a SATA BIOS getting loaded ?

this is the problem that im having my sata drives are in socket 3&4. i had no idea why they were in those sockets(it was a bought system) and when it came to reinstall xp pro it could recognise the hard drives.
how i know why.
The silicon image drivers.
thwe manufactures said they would said me the drivers but ill probably be able to get them myself from the cd now i know what im looking for.
i had no idea about this forum it was about the sixth itme on the google.co.uk list.
its nice to find what you want and i know where to come in future.
COOL FORUM

Your bios might be set to RAID functionality for the SATA connectors. In this case you would need drivers before XP could install on them. In this case you could set the option for the Via SATA controller to IDE so that the disks can be accessed as non-raid drives. Just a thought to what could be causing your problem.