A8V Won't recognize SATA DVD, get NTDLR.dll missing error too

[VikingsPimp]

Please help. I've read a million posts on various sites and worked countless hours on my new system, but my 2 big problems remain. My system config is in my signature.

1) Using the 6 XP boot floppy disks downloaded from MS, it errors out on the 6th disk (2 different sets) and doesn't allow me access to my Plextor DVD/CD drive.


2) I get a "NTDLR.dll missing" error.

 

[VikingsPimp]

Oops. Accidentally posted before I was done typing.

The single drive is partitioned NTFS and ready to go. The boot sequence is 1) floppy 2) HD -- no CD.
RAID is set to IDE for single drive. I feel I'm getting close on this. If I can boot from CD then I'm thinking XP install might clear up the NTDLR error?

One hunch as to why the NTDLR error. After erroring out of the disk boot, I tried booting from a WIN98 Setup Disk after already partitioning in NTFS. Does the conflict of the FAT32 WIN98 disk have something to do with my problems?

My notes are at home. Just throwing out some things from memory.

Thanks for any advice.

 

[imported_rhfactor]

If you are loading XP, why are you not installing from the CD?

 

[VikingsPimp]

Originally posted by: rhfactor
If you are loading XP, why are you not installing from the CD?

As I said in the first post, I am unable to access the DVD/CD drive as it's unrecognized. I was trying to boot from floppy's, load CD drivers and then of course load XP.

Right now it says "NTLDR is missing. Press Ctrl Alt Del to restart." It's an endless loop.

I just now sat down to work on it again today so I'll try some new things and report back in case it jogs someone's memory about a possible similar problem.

 

[Big Lar]

Well, as I havn't tried doing what you are yet, all i can say is that XP is looking for the mobo drivers, and as the sata drive is newer than XP, you need to provide them, perhaps on a diff floppy?
Edit; Perhaps it could be boot order in bios as well.

 

[Uncle Bob]

Ah, the plextor drive is serial ata, that's why you can't boot from it........

The problem is that few here will have ever tried installing XP from floppy!

OK, from memory of installing NT from floppy (a long,long time ago) I suspect that after the 2nd or 3rd disc (I'm guessing here of course) you should still see a prompt at the bottom of the screen saying something like "press F6 if you need to install a third party controller", press F6 and eventually XP will ask you to install the manufacturer supplied driver disc. You need to have made this disc from the support CD that came with your motherboard (phone a friend time if you don't have another computer you can use).

If you have the hard disc on one controller and the plextor on the other controller then you will need to have driver discs ready for both controllers (VIA and Promise) If they're both on the same controller then you only need the drivers disc for that controller during the install.

hope this helps, good luck

 

[VikingsPimp]

Big Lar, there are only 2 items in my boot order, Floppy and HD.

Uncle Bob, I'm not trying to install XP from floppy.

I booted up with a WIN98 setup disk but the CD drivers wouldn't load because it's looking for an ATAPI CD drive NOT Serial ATA, which is what I have.

Does anybody know how to get my mobo to recognize my SATA DVD/CD drive?

 

[Uncle Bob]

You are. Maybe you're not using 600+ floppy discs, but you are launching the XP install from floppy

As I see you have two choices
1) Try what I have suggested
2) Obtain a standard IDE CD rom drive to get your system running