How to make Nforce4 SATA floppy disk for Win XP X64

[MajorPayne]

I recently downloaded the new release of Windows XP X64 (legitemately from the MSDN), and attempted to install it on my system last night (An A64 3000+, on a DFI SLI mobo with 2x512 sticks of Kingston HyperX ram) onto a SATA drive (not raided tho). Since I could not find a floppy creator for the SATA drivers, I tried it without them, and it detected the disk fine (or so it seemed). It got through formatting the drive (a full format to NTFS), but then when copying files (still on the blue low res background prior to the initial reboot) it gives a bsod screen, with the message "Machine Exeption". I have not been able to find anything on this from googling it, and I do not (now) have my machine overclocked at all, so I am kind of mystefied by this. My best quess was that perhaps I DID need the f6 SATA drivers after all, so I downloaded the latest Nforce4 driver package from Nvidia for X64, and (since there is no floppy creation tool), I copied all of the files (except the nvraidtool folder) form the IDE directory onto a floppy (I have heard that this is how to make an f6 disk for nforce4 64 bit drivers). I then tried the install again, and added both drivers listed. This time, I got a message that it cannot load nvraid.cat, and a couple of other files (which are definitely NOT in the IDE directory, or anywhere else in the driver download). Skipping these files yields a different error message (I cannot remember it now), but goes no further.

So my question is this.... Am I doing something wrong in how I am creating the driver disk, or is the "machine exception" message indicitave of different problems? Any advice would be appreciated, since I cannot go home and play with my machine until later tonight, and not knowing what is causing the problem is driving me nutz!

 

[Doctorweir]

Same problem here...the .cat (security catalog) files are missing in the 64bit driver package...IDE and RAID...
Using the 32bits or not using at all leads to false drive access and failure...

Anyone solved this?
Personally I have my 64bit test running on my second drive which I hooked up to the PATA ports for the install...no chance to install a 64bit partition on the RAID array though...

 

[MajorPayne]

Well that completely sucks! I have a legit copy of Win XP X64 waiting for me to install it, and to do so, I will have to go back to my PATA drives (when I have 1 non-RAID, and 2 RAID0 SATA drives ready to go)! Does anyone have a better solution than going back to a Pata drive for the time being?

 

[MajorPayne]

Originally posted by: MajorPayne
Well that completely sucks! I have a legit copy of Win XP X64 waiting for me to install it, and to do so, I will have to go back to my PATA drives (when I have 1 non-RAID, and 2 RAID0 SATA drives ready to go)! Does anyone have a better solution than going back to a Pata drive for the time being?

I finally figured out how to get around this late last night. I downloaded the SATA driver disk creator for Windows32, made the disk, and then copied all of the files in the Windows X64 IDE directory (from the Nforce4 X64 drivers) into the floppy (so it overwrote all of the duplicate Windows32 files with Windows X64 ones). This gave me a disk with the missing files (albeit in Windows32 format), along with the X64 drivers. I was able to use it to install Windows XP X64 on my Sata single drive (and later onto my RAID0 SATA array) without any errors at all. It is running flawlessly now. It seems that the files which are missing from the Windows X64 IDE directory are needed to tell Windows what files to load, and what to do with them, but since the filenames are the same, overwriting the Win32 ones with X64 ones lets the disk work perfectly! It would be nice if either DFI or Nvidia would bother to make a SATA driver disk creator for X64, but this method seems to work well in the meantime.

 

[mofrack]

MajorPayne, thanks a lot for this info. I am also getting a copy of XP64 from MSDN and was worried about this exact issue. You have saved me much time and frustration by posting your experiences. I am in your debt...

 

[MajorPayne]

Glad I could help! If I can help anyone to avoid my own pitfalls, I will always try to do so.