SATA drivers/Windows install/ AMD 939 NF4

[Zakman3]

Here's the new comp config:

AMD 3200+
Asus A8N-E
Seagate 160GB SATA
1 GB Corsair VS
MSI Radeon X800XL
LG 52x CDRW
Windows XP Pro w/SP1

Trying to install Windows. Setup hangs with the message "Setup is starting Windows". Tried making SATA driver disk with supplied Asus CD as described in FAQ, and pressing F6 to load SATA drivers. No good: Windows CD can't see the HDD no matter what I do. I've tried several sets of SATA disks: the Sil114 NV 32 bit, 64 bit, and the "Make a Disk" function in Windows that loads a Raid and Sil driver.

Also tried partitioning my HDD with Seagate's utility to make it less than 137 GB.

Setup tells me it can't find any disk drives. The drive does show up in BIOS though. Would do a BIOS update but the Asus website seems to only have the "release" BIOS for this board. Do you guys have any suggestions? Thanks!

 

[Gelardi]

F6 didn't worked for me either, but if the install goeas on, i get a question later, if i wan't to install a driver.
I did, and windows found my sata drive.

 

[Zakman3]

If I press F6, I get a screen about 3-4 minutes later asking me to specify whether I want to load a manufacturer's disk. None of the disks I have put in at that point work. What driver did you load? Thanks!

 

[grooge]

You dont need SATA drivers if you use the nforce SATA controller. Maybe RAID is enabled in BIOS, so, having one HDD and trying to have the controller working in RAID mode expecting 2 drives may cause problem.

If you have the Sil controller, then you'll need the Sil Controller drivers. Check for jumper on the board to select RAID or SATA for this controller. Maybe it is an option in BIOS too.

But, if you take a look at your manual, fint the nforce SATA connector, set the BIOS for this controller for SATA operation, you wont need any drivers.

 

[Zakman3]

Exhaustive reading of the manual as well as a lot of searching in the BIOS doesn't show me any Sil3114 controller: seems to me Asus may have put it on the support disc just because it's on the A8N-E SLI version.

This board has 4 SATA connectors on a Nforce Ultra controller: I have the drive connected to SATA1 master. There are only two jumpers on the board that I can find: they are for chassis intrusion detection and C-RTC (something to do with clearing the CMOS).

Is there anything special I have to do to set the BIOS for SATA operation? It sees the drive just fine as master on SATA1, so I'm at a loss.

Thank you for your suggestions.

 

[grooge]

you may not have the Sil controller on your board.. It should be a chip marked Sil at the bottom.
As for the nforce controller, just make sure that RAID is disabled for thr connector you want to use.

 

[Zakman3]

Ok, I'm pretty sure RAID is disabled, but humor me: how would I specifically disable it on this board? The NVRAID function under "Advanced" in the BIOS is clearly set to "disabled". Is there any other place to do this as well?

 

[jonnylingo]

My friend was having a lot of problems with installing SATA drivers as well on an Asus motherboard. He ended up slipstreaming a copy of windows with all the SATA drivers built into it so he didn't need to hit F6 when Windows was loading. That way, all the drivers were already there. Here's a link to the program to slipstream...its called nlite.

http://nuhi.msfn.org/

Just an idea you might want to try.

 

[GadgetBuilder]

Have you run Memtest86?

Whenever things aren't working as expected it pays to try it -- mostly, memory is OK but every once in a while it finds something.

 

[andrewsdw]

I had this issue with my asus board and sil raid chip...sounds crazy but you need to use the intel raid application driver during windows install....it will see the drive and bingo. This problem had me soooo pissed...finally figured it out by having the sil drivers and intel raid drivers...the intel ones worked though?