Installing Windows XP on Raptor SATA with MSI Neo Platinum

[Valaire]

Okay, I just built my entire computer from a previous thread and am having the most annoying problem ever. I cannot get Windows to be able to access my SATA disk when installing Windows XP. It says "setup cannot access disk" but is able to locate the disk and give its capacity in both setup and the bios. It's connected to the SATA1 slot, and I've temporarily disabled my 2 other IDE HDD's for simplicity's sake. I have Sata1 enabled, Sata1 dma transfer enabled, and is listed as third IDE master in bios.

I have tried formatting the Raptor using recovery console -- formatting hangs at 0 percent. I have also setup a one disk raid array with the Raptor which allowed setup to use the Raptor, but when I tried to format the partition for NTFS, it also did not move from 0% in the formatting.

I have tried various combinations of F6'ing the nvidia drivers (which shouldn't be necessary) with the same result of 'setup is not able to access the disk'. It also takes a about a minute to get to the policy agree step for windows install, when it says 'starting windows'...it never usually takes that long, but eventually it comes around.

I have no idea what else to try to bring the hard drive around. Any suggestions?

 

[Valaire]

I got Windows Setup to allow me to choose a partition on the Raptor, but it still hangs at 0% formatting in both recovery console and windows setup.

 

[Valaire]

The only progress I made somehow was to go from the disk saying 'setup cannot access disk' to being able to be accecssed, creating a parrtition, and freezing at format. Does this point to a bad raptor or mobo? I have no idea.

 

[Shlong]

Sata drivers on floppy at press F6 to install Raid or 3rd party drivers.

 

[Valaire]

For the MSI NEo plat you should not have to use raid drivers to install single SATA drive. Plus, I've already tried that.

 

[NJDevil]

What the crap, I thought floppies were pretty much obsolete. I didn't even bother putting a floppy drive in my new machine. I plan on eventually getting another Harddrive, it will probably be a SATA one, so how the crap do I install the drivers w/o a floppy drive?

I too have the MSI K8N

 

[Valaire]

It depends on the motherboard, but for the MSI K8 Neo, you do NOT need to F6 the nvidia drives if you are installing a SATA drive. You DO need it for any type of RAID.

 

[Valaire]

Hard Drive freezes up in all testing diagnostic utilities... I'm gonna end up having to RMA this I think.

 

[Valaire]

Still waiting to hear from WD. I've checked the internet for problems with formatting drives, but most people usually get an error message. I get nothing, just stays at 0%.