Cannot boot / install XP on new PC

[Bobo72]

Hi,

Just a couple of days ago, I bought a brand new Shuttle SB86i barebone PC plus an Intel P4 processor. The rest of the necessary HW, I stripped from my old PC (DDR, optical + S-ATA drive).

The optical drive is now connected to the IDE cable (tried both slave and master) and the S-ATA disk to the serial ATA main connector. It is not immediately possible to connect a floppy drive to the PC.

My problem is that I'm unable to boot the PC. I imagined that I would be able to put in my Win XP disc in my CD-ROM and boot from there, but that's not possible.

My CD-ROM (or DVD for that matter - tried both) is not recognized by the system. It cannot even open the drive bay - all that happens is that the LED is on constantly and nothing happens when i press the 'open' button.

If I turn on the machine w/o connecting the IDE cable to the optical drive, I'm able to open and close the bay - but then the drive is not connected of course ...

When I start the PC, I'm able to enter BIOS but from there I just get a 'please insert system disc' error. I tried to force BIOS to boot from CD / DVD, but as it apparently does not recognize these drives it doesn't really help a lot ...

Can someone help please - any tip or anything is highly appreciated. Can it really be that I have to connect a floppy (or try to boot from a flash drive) and install Win 98 - before upgrading to XP??

Thanks in advance from a desperate PC owner in Copenhagen,
Br Bo

 

[bcastner]

You will need a floppy to load the SATA drivers.
Your optical issues sounds like the IDE cable is installed backwards. Try to match the red stripe on the cable to pin 1 on the drive. You may also have to jumper the drive itself for cable select, or use a cable select type of 80-pin cable.

 

[Bobo72]

Thank you very much for a swift answer - and you were right (a bit embarrasing really ; ) The IDE-cable needed a 180 deg turn. Shuttle arranged it in a way that you actually need to apply a little violence to turn the cable the right way.

About the S-ATA driver, would it be possible to transfer the driver to a flash drive, a CF card or the like?

 

[cbflip2003]

Floppy is the only drive that windows can read on install

 

[linney]

This explores the no floppy drive problem and offers a few suggestions

Error Message:Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in you
thread779-972802

 

[htmlman]

If you reset the boot order in the BIOS you should be able to boot from the CD and install Windows XP Home or Pro. If you are installing Windows 95, 98, ME you can make a boot-able CD from your floppy disk by using a program such as Easy CD Creator. Then you can boot from the CD and when the machine is up in DOS you can replace the CD with the OS you want to install when it requires booting from DOS to install the OS.

 

[Bobo72]

First of all, thank you all - thanks to your help, I managed to get my PC up and running in one day after my first post.

It turned out that in order to use a floppy on my new PC, I had to get hold of a 'slim connector FDD cable'. This was nowhere to be found in any of the computer shops that I visited - actually no-one had heard about this connector before. (Incredible that Shuttle does not include this cable in the package?!)

Luckily, through the thread mentioned by linney, I found the nLite application. With this, I was able to include my S-ATA driver in a copy of my XP Pro installation CD (brilliant programme, nLite : ) Once I had the new CD ready, there were no problems installing XP on my S-ATA disk, and now everything works as its supposed to : )