I am setting up my 1st PC with an SATA drive.

My XP CD is very old but has worked excellent on many installs.
I was wondering if this could be the cause of my problem and a newer version of XP would install OK.

When doing the windows setup I am allowed to only select the CDROM as the device to install XP on.
There doesnt seem to be any partition available on my SATA drive.
It is listed in my bios so I think the drive itself is working.

Thanks for any help, it is much appriciated!!

Surf

Hi Surf, welcome to the pchf!

Does it detect the hard drive in the windows install? Or just say that there is no partition available? On brand new hard drives -they come without any partitions on them and Windows XP has the facility to set the partition up.

The only thing it shows is 131MB unpartitioned on ATAPI device.

I watched the file loading closely during the start of the windows setup(on the bottom of the screen) and never saw anything about SATA. Thats why I concluded it must be caused by the version.
I just have this memory in my head that SATA wasnt supported until SP2. That could be completely incorrect tho.

I don't want to have to spend another $100+ to get this rig going.

(thanks for quick reply BTW)

No worries

I have also heard this - but not sure of it's validity...as i've installed windows xp (no sp) on SATA drives before...without the need of 3rd party drivers.

It may be worth a shot - see if you can find the drivers for your chipset (for the sata) and make adriver disk, on the setup screen hit F6 when it asks for 3rd party scsi/raid drivers and continue as per normal.

Altenatively - delete all partitions on the hard drive, and try again.

This problem is resolved.
It was just my own stupidity.

The 130MB was actually 130G, and I guess windows just cant see the entire size of the HDD and thats why it didnt show 250G. Which is why I didn't recognize it as the HDD.

Thanks for all your help.

marked as resolved

genie3251

However windows wont show it as 250gb because of the way manufacturers calculate drive space. It will probably be more like 180-200gb (i think).