Getting my OS on a SATA

I have been reading for the last month to try to solve my issues with my new hard drive. I liked the challenge for awhile but I just plain sick of it now so I am asking for your help. The multiple topics I have read and tried are close to my problem but none are exact so maybe someone can fill in the blanks for me.

I bought a new hardrive, a SATA and tried to install XP Pro service pack 3. It would not work because after many attempts at trouble shooting I found that the disc was bad.
So I installed windows 7 ultimate and it installed fine (all ten times) but it seems a lot of my hardware on my computer has issues with the OS and every time I would let windows update the registry got corrupted. It would not allow me to restore, I have done : SFC/SCANNOW,BOOTREC.EXE, REGEDIT.EXE, CHKDSK/F/R I have installed the latest drivers for the motherboard, the motherboard is set for SATA and the motherboard recognizes the harddrive. The list can go on and on, as I said I have read and performed dozens of solutions for problems similar to mine. I could just run windows 7 without any updates and see how it goes but I don't want to spend all the time loading and tweaking my new hardrive and have it crash down the road so I decided to install XP Pro service pack 2 which I know is good, I installed it on a spare IDE I had lying around.
I start the computer, press any key and start from the OS disk, I format the drive that 7 was on(NTSF is the only option it gives me) and it copies all the files fine. When it reboots it goes right to a screen “disc could not be read press ctrl/alt/delete to restart”.
I have tried reinstalling XP, deleting the partition, formatting and end up with the same results. Tried to DBAN the drive but the program doesn’t run through the screen shots it shows on DBAN's sight and the bytes or the drive never change after running it. It says it ran without any critical errors but also lists these errors:
error/ dev/sdc process crashed
error dev/sde process crashed
error dev/sdd process crashed
error dev/sdb process crashed
error dev/sda process crashed
Like I said I don't think DBAN is even running as when I press enter after it boots to the first screen it pretty much ends with the info I just listed. I don't even know if I need to run DBAN.
I have also downloaded EASYBCD but it also has its own issues with a can't find folder or something plus I have no idea what I am doing with the program or how to get it to work. I have hit “R” to repair and rewrote the MBR and ran FIXBOOT and probably a few more solutions I have read but nothing changes. It reboots after installing the XP files to the same error about not being able to read the disc.

The only thing this (newbie?) can be sure of is that the XP Pro service pack 2 disc is good (I am using it now on my spare 20GB HD to try and solve my issue) and the hard drive is also good (as it will run with windows 7 ultimate as long as I don't update)

Mainboard> ASUS P4P800-VM
New SATA hard drive> Hitachi HDS721050CLA362 (500GB)
I wish I had the money to go buy another HD (ide) but I am stuck with what I got and can't pay to have It fixed, trust me I would, I'm tired of playing with it .
Can some one please guide me through this or give me a link with step by steps.....Sorry for the long post but I'm hoping it will make it that much easier to solve
Charlie
 
Before we get too far into this, can you download and burn a memtest86+ cd? (Remember to burn as a disk image, and not just burning the .iso file). Run that at least 1 complete pass. If possible, run it overnight. Conventional wisdom is 7 passes is what you want to do. Although, I think in reality if RAM is causing your issues you'll throw a few errors pretty quickly and certainly within the first pass.
 
maybeeee

I will run the test just to see but the computer works fine with my regular ide hard drive which I'm using to talk with you now and the new sata hard drive works with windows 7 installed on it.(without any microsoft updates) I just can't get xp pro to work on the Sata. Is it because I had windows 7 on it first? None of these are upgrade versions of windows
 
Have you checked your bios settings? I've ran into this before and had to change a SATA setting in bios but I cant remember what it was. Just check and see what your settings for SATA are in bios.

-Cody
 
because XP has no native drivers for SATA drives, you have two options for installing XP on a SATA drive.

(1) add motherboard SATA drivers for XP very early in the OS installation. This works well with a floppy drive, often does not work when using some alternative source for the special drivers.

(2) set the SATA drive in the motherboard bios to use a non-ACHI access method. Change ACHI to ATA (or 'native IDE') and xp pro installs with no extras. ACHI and ATA may not be the only options. Other possibilities for the SATA channel may be 'compatibility' or 'disable' or 'non-raid' or 'disable SATA AHCI mode'. Motherboards seem to have all sorts of ways of describing the same thing.

This option (2) will solve your problem (it is what hxccody is on about). The only snag is very early SATA motherboards around 2004-5 did not have those options. Hope you have a more recent board.
 
I made the boot disk from Hitachi that slowed the sata speed down and left the other option disabled. I then reloaded xp pro and still got the disk read error.
I then changed the bios IDE configuration from enhanced to compatible, no change I also changed IDE configuration from sata to pata-sata (native), no change. I even reinstalled xp with every change I made, also trying BOOTCFG and FIXMBR. I also flashed the motherboard with a floppy of the latest version.

According to ASUS the motherboard does not require sata drivers

Maybe I would be better off trying to install windows 7 again since it works on the sata, until I do the updates. I spent weeks trying to fix that too. I wish I could take this Sata hard drive back.

Anymore ideas???
 
You may be right to suspect the drive. See here for a similar problem in which it became clear there can be incompatibilities (in respect of XP anyway) between motherboards and certain HDD's or downright HDD failures. https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic159863.html#post995761

You could also specify in detail the model of motherboard, you have told us the model of HDD and precise SP version of the install CD for XP. I would say an SP3 version of XP is the only one that could reasonably be expected to work with a motherboard more recent than 2009. I see you stated that it was an SP3 version. Is that actually a retail SP3 or a built CD with slipstreamed SP3 ?

I find it very odd that you claim you can install Win7 on the SATA but cannot update it (with patches ?). I cannot imagine any fault that would produce symptoms like that. I would recommend you download a Hitachi drive tester which does extensive read-write tests across the whole surface. It will normally be a self-booting CD image, so is OS-independant. What I am looking for now is some reason to say the HDD is faulty in some way. Or the motherboard sata channel is.....

BTW SNGX1275 asked you to thoroughly test the ram. Did you do that?

Found a place with reports on Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.C 500 GB http://www.google.co.uk/products/ca...050CLA362&cid=17148002124327055764&os=reviews
Cons: HD failed after 3 months. Hitachi takes ~3 weeks for in-warranty replacement. Must ship old HD back to them in Hitachi-approved packaging. 3rd Hitachi HD I have purchased. 2 of them became defective. Never again

A worrying large number of failure reports there.
 
It is strange and I would rather have windows 7. The "patches" are they in the windows updates? Cause the updates are what kills the computer. I can run it for a week, as soon as I do the updates it's fried. So I know I can run 7 on the sata for weeks, its not the cable, the drive, it just won't work with XP. I'm about to put 7 back in and hope people can help with the update issue.
I tested the hard drive with Hitachi's bootable cd tools and it passed everything. Others are saying it's the battery or the memory but I just don't see how since it runs with windows 7 (until I update).
Let me know about these patches?
the mother board is ASUS P4P800-VM and they said it doesn't require sata drivers. Others say that XP does I don't understand the differance and what and where to get these "xp drivers"
 
Regarding the installation of Xp only, it does not require the installation of SATA drivers provided you have disabled AHCI and enabled IDE. When installing Xp your hard drives will not be recognized unless you have installed the SATA drivers or have enabled IDE in the bios. You will receive the error "Setup did not detect any hard disk".

Many articles about installing Xp on a SATA capable computer discuss using the F6 prompt during setup which requires a floppy drive. However, since most newer computers do not have floppy drives there is a better way using Nlite to slipstream the drivers into the windows disc thereby loading them along with the other setup files.

How to slipstream Windows Xp.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/wind...d-disk-drives-during-windows-xp-installation/

After reading through all the post here and then doing a little research it appears the most likely cause of your issue is due to unrecoverable bad sectors on the hdd. You could either return the drive asking for a new one provided it is still under warranty or, in the alternative you can try HDD Regenerator. It is only free to recover a certain number of sectors. After that you must purchase the software but, it does work many times. Also, does your computer have media card readers installed? If so, they could be the cause of the errors you see when using DBAN. What do you mean your registry becomes corrupt after installing Windows 7 updates? How do you know the registry is corrupt? Do you get error messages? If so, what are they? Not all hardware is compatible with Windows 7. Did you run the Windows 7 compatibility test prior to installing it? It will tell you what hardware is and is not compatible. With all due respect, when there is an error with a Windows operating system there is a code that gives the details of the error. Those codes are to assist in the diagnosis of the issue. No one can guess what the cause is. Post the error codes or the exact error message. You can look in Event Viewer and perhaps discover a solution as to why the updates for Windows 7 occurred.

http://download.cnet.com/HDD-Regenerator/3000-18512_4-10330123.html
 
Others are saying it's the battery or the memory but I just don't see how since it runs with windows 7 (until I update).
Let me know about these patches?

I don't know why you are so resistant to test the RAM. Test it. You just said it passed HD tests, which gbhall said that was the only other thing that could cause these problems that he knew of. So just test the RAM, you've spent several days now avoiding a RAM test that could probably be concluded in an hour or so. Sure, maybe it isn't the RAM, but bad RAM causes a lot of odd problems. I have seen Windows install fine with bad RAM and then on the first real boot throw a registry error problem. Everything I'm seeing here says you need to eliminate the RAM before we go on to more complex issues.
 
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