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Windows XP setup - No hard drives found

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markk85

Technical User
Nov 22, 2005
40
GB
I am trying to install windows xp on my computer. I have Asus k8v-x se motherboard and a maxtor 200gb sata hard drive.

The hard drive is detected by the motherboard but when I boot from the windows xp install disk it says:

"Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer"

Then I am unable to continue with the install.

Can anyone help?
 
Sounds like you need to install a SATA driver right at the beginning of your XP install (when it asks if any third party drivers are needed) Press F6
You need to have the appropriate driver for your operating system extracted to a floppy disk.
Once this driver is installed it will find the hard drive during the install.
Martin

We like members to GIVE and not just TAKE.
Participate and help others.
 
Does the motherboard or hdd come with the right SATA drivers you can put on a floppy, like when Windows Setup initially says to press F6 for third party SATA or RAID drivers? I had to slipstream SATA drivers to get my laptop to recognize my SATA hard drive---it originally had Vista on it, and drivers for sound were HELL to find! I manually tried to slipstream drivers into my XP Pro build, and it recognized the hdd, but never loaded Windows right---just hung. What did work was nLite---worked perfectly! Here's a link...


Good luck.

Burt
 
I tried Nlite and that didn't seem to work.

I have found the drivers on the motherboard disk. I put them onto a floppy and pressed F6 to load them on set up.

It detects the file as VIA VT8237 Sata Raid Controller. However, when I press enter to install this error message comes up:

"File \NT5\viamraid.sys caused an unexpected error (18) at line 2113 in d:\xpsprtm\base\boot\setup\oemdisk.c.
 
It looks like your copied the raid version of the drivers. You dont want to put those on the disk, you just want the normal SATA drivers. Search the CD again and make sure that you copy the ones that dont have "RAID" in the name, or find the ones that say "nonraid
 
You might have better luck going to the website, they should have the latest drivers.

The answer is "42"
 
I find it amazing that Windows cannot get the drivers from a CD. Any time the term "floppy drive" is used, noses turn up. "What use is a floppy drive?"; is the response. Yet without a $7.00 drive and a $0.49 disk those great big screaming SATA-2 drives are pretty much worthless if you're building a system.

Hmmmm

 
Sometimes it matters which SATA port you have it plugged into. Sometimes they can be connected to different controllers and one is auto detecting and one needs drivers.

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.
 
I find it amazing that Windows cannot get the drivers from a CD. Any time the term "floppy drive" is used, noses turn up. "What use is a floppy drive?"; is the response. Yet without a $7.00 drive and a $0.49 disk those great big screaming SATA-2 drives are pretty much worthless if you're building a system.

That's because the installer is based on the antique Windows NT installer. But you can load third-party drivers from CD or USB devices in Vista.
 
Many newer motherboards will also let you designate a USB drive as a virtual floppy. Lame to have to work around it, but as noted above- Vista doesn't have this problem. It just has lots of other problems :)
 
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