Probs with WindowsXP reinstall

L

London Geezer

Legend
Supporter
Right, i have a little problem.

I tried to install WINXP-64 once and at startup it asked me if i wanted to install a third party SATA HDD. Which i have. So i go through it and it asks me for a floppy ( :rolleyes: ) with the SATA HDD drivers.

I don't have a floppy drive. So, abandoned it, forgotten forever.

Months later, I am taller, cuter, we got Saddam, and my Computer badly needs an OS reinstall, which i've not done since buyign the PC, in March last year.

I take it it will still ask me if i have a SATA HDD, and i won't be able to install the drivers, since i have no floppy drive. So, no WindowsXP reinstall.

What can i do??

Thanks guys
 
And you do have SATA drive for which you need to install the drivers, right?
If you do not have SATA, then it might be just a matter of disabling the SATA from bios, so that it will not ask it at bootup any more.

I guess the XP install doesn't ask where you want to load the SATA drivers from, but automatically starts to load them from floppy after you tell it needs those by pressing the F6, so trying to get it to install them from cd could be difficult.

If on the other hand your Windows HD is an ide drive, and your second drive is a SATA, then you should be able to install the drivers if needed even from cd.
 
Captain Chickenpants said:
If you have a CD writer you could download them and burn them onto CD.
Click to expand...

Windows setup will only take the drivers from the floppy. Big huge :rolleyes: but that's it.

Rabid, the SATA is the only drive i have. Also, would disabling SATA from the bios affect the performance at all?
 
Well, if SATA is your only drive, then disabling it from bios would most likely mean it would not be recognised at all.

So, you are doing a new, clean install of Windows XP-64 ?
.
.
.
why did you do that!?!? You should have just used the repair option in the install you silly :p then it wouldn't have asked the SATA disks.
Did you even get to make a backup of your p0rn collection 2x :LOL:
 
rabidrabbit said:
Well, if SATA is your only drive, then disabling it from bios would most likely mean it would not be recognised at all.

So, you are doing a new, clean install of Windows XP-64 ?
.
.
.
why did you do that!?!? You should have just used the repair option in the install you silly :p then it wouldn't have asked the SATA disks.
Did you even get to make a backup of your p0rn collection 2x :LOL:
Click to expand...


Nononono...
the story was, months ago, when i tried to install Win64, it asked me about the SATA thing. So, i never installed Win64.

Now, i'm trying to do a WinXP reinstall, cause it's the right time. Forget Win64.

It will ask me the same thing about SATA drivers and i just needed to know what i can do.
 
Floppy drives are dirt-cheap, so I'd buy one and if you don't use it daily you can just toss it in the corner till you need it again.
 
london-boy said:
the story was, months ago, when i tried to install Win64, it asked me about the SATA thing. So, i never installed Win64.

Now, i'm trying to do a WinXP reinstall, cause it's the right time. Forget Win64.

It will ask me the same thing about SATA drivers and i just needed to know what i can do.
Click to expand...

LB, do you actually use a SATA drive as a boot disc? The XP install only asks you for the disc at this point in case you are trying to install the OS onto a SATA boot disc. Obviously without the SATA manufacturers drivers, the XP install won't be able to access the drive on your SATA interface as a device at intallation time.

If you don't use SATA or only use it as a data disc, then you can just skip this part and go onto the rest of the install, installing SATA drivers later if you need them for a non-boot SATA disc.
 
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros. said:
london-boy said:
the story was, months ago, when i tried to install Win64, it asked me about the SATA thing. So, i never installed Win64.

Now, i'm trying to do a WinXP reinstall, cause it's the right time. Forget Win64.

It will ask me the same thing about SATA drivers and i just needed to know what i can do.
Click to expand...

LB, do you actually use a SATA drive as a boot disc? The XP install only asks you for the disc at this point in case you are trying to install the OS onto a SATA boot disc. Obviously without the SATA manufacturers drivers, the XP install won't be able to access the drive on your SATA interface as a device at intallation time.

If you don't use SATA or only use it as a data disc, then you can just skip this part and go onto the rest of the install, installing SATA drivers later if you need them for a non-boot SATA disc.
Click to expand...

Yes, the SATA drive is my only HDD.
Although i was thinking of buying another HDD, smaller and faster, and keep the 160GB SATA one for storage. But that's a whole different discussion cause i wouldn't know if i am allowed to reinstall windows on another HDD.

So, get a floppy? i know... no one with a desktop PC, everyone went for a laptop.
 
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros. said:
london-boy said:
So, get a floppy? i know... no one with a desktop PC, everyone went for a laptop.
Click to expand...

Okay, I'm with you now. Try this. ie, make a version of your XP install disc with your SATA/RAID drivers already on the CD.
Click to expand...

Yup, BZB has the only viable solution if you don't have/want a floppy. You basically have to roll your SATA drivers into the WinXP CD, edit a few files, yada yada. Man is this a screaming pain in the ass :devilish: I went through about four CD's before I got the whole process down right. One wouldn't boot because I somehow got the boot partition wrong. The next one booted but never realized the new drivers were on there. The third one booted, recognized that it had the drivers, installed most of them but failed on one file and thus hosed my access. The fourth one worked fine except I somehow broke something else o_O

I actually got to the point were I borrowed a USB floppy from the office to get my PC loaded. A few days later I realized my mistake and got my fifth and final "modded" XP cd working.

Just in time to buy another motherboard two months later with a different SATA driver. There are not words... o_O :oops:
 
Yup. I'm the proud owner of a $12 USB floppy drive now just because of all my loving interest in repackaging the XP boot cd ;)
 
Heya London,

I've noticed similar issues on "older" machines... Make sure the USB floppy is plugged in when you first start the machine, and make sure you've got the latest BIOS. A few of our corporate machines needed a BIOS flash in order to get them to recognize an externally-attached floppy as the A: drive.
 
I thought the point of SATA being protocol-level compatible was you wouldn't NEED any special drivers for it to work... Obviously microsoft found a way around that and made it incompatible anyway! ;)
 
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