Please help me one last time. Serial ATA will not show, windows setup cannot continue

[wackycrazydumbdumb]

ok cpugeniusmv. i tried to make that install cd. that was a no-go. so i went out and bought a floppy drive. installed it. and tried to use those drivers pressing F6 at the beginning of windows installation. it said it was loading them. they loaded. i pressed enter to continue installation. then i got the screen where it could still not find the HD. i tried 4 different drivers with no success. it just can't find it. here i'll attach some images to show you all where i went. i followed it as correctly as possible. these are the drivers that came on the mobo disc, and the ones i downloaded from the manufact. site. so i have no idea what to do. unless i put the drivers on the floppy incorrectly. the soyo ones i got specifically for my board on their site wouldn't even fit on a floppy. eesh. maybe someone can IM me on aim? my sn is maximuspaynimus. any help is appreciated. thanks. and, mods im sorry for making so many threads. :(

[que-em]

I'm no expert on this but is it possible that he'll have to upgrade the BIOS with the drivers before it can be reconized by windows.

[cpugeniusmv]

i'd update the BIOS if there is an update available...

if that doesn't help, call up the manufacturer of the motherboard and ask them what you need to do.

[wackycrazydumbdumb]

how exactly do i update the BIOS? haha ive never done it. do you just have to boot to a cd? or something. floppy?

[que-em]

Assuming it's Promise (they are the only ones I know of) go here http://www.promise.com/support/download/download_eng.asp, select your product and find the installation instrutions for the BIOS. Your going to need two floppies: One will be formatted as a bootable disk the other contains the drivers.

Another option is to go to the manufacturers website, go to the support or download/drivers section, find your particular piece of hardware and get the drivers.

[mrsdoyle]

Just caught the tail end of this, you should have some SIL drivers on your mobo disc they usually fit on 1 or 2 floppys, start the windows install and press F6 when it asks if you want to install any 3rd party drivers and follow instructions. if your mobo is SATA capable the drivers should be on the mobo disk somewhere, you shouldnt have to do any other complicated stuff you will just drive yourself mad. gl.

[wackycrazydumbdumb]

one of the pictures i took was of the SIL driver loaded. and it still said there was no HD found. i have an Award PCI BIOS. i went to awards site and you have to already have a running pc to update the BIOS. at least from what i read.

[mrsdoyle]

Sorry was lazy and didnt look at all photos, have you got an old or spare ide hard disk that you can install xp onto then at least you can work from windows loading drivers updating bios installing disk etc.

[wackycrazydumbdumb]

no unfortunately i don't.

[muffenme]

:fire

1) Does your bios see the drive, if not then Windows wouldn't see it either. Make sure all conection are in right. There a line on the cable that tells you which one is pin 1 wire. Make sure the power for the drive is in all the way. In the case of IDE make sure that the drive is set to master or this is the only drive. Some hard drives don't like you to put it as master when there only one drive, check manual for your drive.

2) This may sound odd but does DOS see this drive. Make a DOS disk and boot, this could be a boot disk from windows 9x, MS-DOS, PC-DOS, or FreeDOS. Type in "c:" without quote and hit enter.

3) If your computer bios see the drive and DOS reports an error, like drive not ready, then follow the instruction in the manual to format the drive, some harddrive aren't formated. Make sure to check the drive for error like scandisk.

4) If all fails then you might have:
_a) Bad hard drive.
_b) A drive that the bios or ide/scsi controller can't handle.
_c) A bad ide/scsi controller.
_d) Incompatable with Windows XP, if DOS see it and XP Doesn't.
_e) A virus (I don't think this one apply because you flash the bios the right way I assume).

:hole