not detecting hard drive during windows setup

[keltonw7]

I am building a computer for a friend and am having problems installing windows.

specs:
ASRock 775XFire -eSATA2+ mobo
Pentium D 2.8 processor
1 gig DDRII 533
AOpen 6600GT 128mb graphics card
Seagate 250gb SATAII 300mb/s
Lite-on DVD-RW IDE

after installing all the parts I turned it on and it posted and asked for a operating system... in post it recognized the hard drive... I put in a windows xp cd w/sp2 and started setup. it loaded all its stuff and then asked as to what I wanted to do. I chose to install windows xp and it said it did not detect a hard drive. I tried several times. In frustration I installed it into my computer and installed windows on it without a problem. I put it back into the new computer and attemted to load it. It posted and began to load windows but imediately there was a flash of a blue screen (it went away so quickly that I could not read any of it) and it rebooted... it did this several times. I tried different SATA cables and even tried booting with another hard drive but to no avil... the same outcome appeared.

I am pretty much unsure of what to do now... any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[iss]

You cant load windows onto a hard drive on one machine and then stick that hard drive in another machine unless both computers are almost identical.

First make sure that the sata drive is in the primary sata port since it is the boot drive. secondly make sure that in the bios that Both SATA and PATA (IDE) is enabled.

 

[keltonw7]

I figured so but... I thought maybe it might allow it to be recognized in setup if it had windows on.

yeah.. they are both enabled.
and I have tried the hard drive in all four enabled SATAII ports

 

[iss]

is the XP you are using at least SP1?

 

[keltonw7]

the cd is windows with service pack 2
and I also tried my windows cd with service pack 1

both could not detect the harddrive

 

[iss]

Did you install the sata drivers during bootup?

 

[kirock]

You need to press F6 when the Win XP cd boots up. There is a little message at the bottom of the screen, something to the effect:"Would you like to install 3rd party software, press F6?".
This software is going to be the SATA drivers that came with the new HDD (or go to manufact site and download them to a floppy.) Win XP does not contain default sata drivers, you must load them seperately using the F6 command.

Cheers.

 

[tweaks_sav]

One thing you can try if you are not doing RAID:
Newer mobo's have an option for the SATA controller to be recognized as IDE and not RAID. Then you wouldn't need the floppy with the SATA drivers.

 

[keltonw7]

Thanks for the help.

I don't have a floppy disk drive installed... but I probably could swap one in from anyther computer if needed. I do remember seeing something in the bios about making the SATAII drives recognized as IDE... I'll try that first. If it works and install windows, can I just install the SATA drivers and reboot and change the bios back to SATA?

 

[keltonw7]

I changed the bios settings from AHCP (I think.. AHsomething) to IDE. I get the blue screen: Stop: 0x0000006F (0xC0000020, 0x0000000, ....)
Session3_Initialization_Failed

the floppy drive that I was going to use I found out is a piece of crap and doesn't want to work correctly. so my question is do I need to go buy a floppy drive to load drivers during setup? will it fix the porblem? and I don't have drivers for the samsung SP2504C... and I'm having problems finding them on samsung's site, but I do have a disc that came with the mobo that has drivers and I can boot with it to make some kind of SATA driver on a floppy.

 

[tweaks_sav]

Hmm, if you can, try a different disc or different CDdrive, that fixes the Session3_Initialization_Failed sometimes.
Might as well try a HDTest and Memtest86+ just in case.
The DFT test will work with any manufacture HD.

 

[N3051M]

but I do have a disc that came with the mobo that has drivers and I can boot with it to make some kind of SATA driver on a floppy.

try the mobo's cd first when it asks you to load the drivers for windows, then if it wont work then create a floppy from that cd..

 

[kirock]

try the mobo's cd first when it asks you to load the drivers for windows, then if it wont work then create a floppy from that cd..

Agreed, this is your best option. Sata drivers are universal, so if the mobo CD has them, you're fine.

 

[tweaks_sav]

Windows Setup will only read SATA drivers from a floppy. I didn't realize he had the original CD and if he boots from it, it'll make his SATA floppy. That's def, the way to go. Then just hit F6 right when Windows Setup starts.

 

[keltonw7]

thank you all

I installed a floppy drive and created a SATA disk from the cd that came with my mobo and f6'd in windows setup and it all went as planned.

thanks