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Installing Win XP to SATA
kit_car_kid06 - 29/5/07 at 02:42 PM

Gotta blummin annoying problem!!

My friend formatted his WD 150GB HDD and have been trying to re-install genuine win xp software.

The annoying thing is the obligatory "format" that xp does before installing, only gets part way through (different everytime) and then an error appears.
He's not sure if its the same error everytime, but when i went round, it was saying there was an error with the .sif file??

Thought the problem could be hardware related, so I ran a WD drive diagnostic program, which came back with no errors found?
We tried my copy of XP - thats not the reason either??

What do you guys suggest?

He had it working since last November - its only recently that its all gone abit pete tong

Jubal - 29/5/07 at 04:00 PM

On some motherboards you need to install SATA drivers before running the XP install. The XP installer gives you the option of doing so by pressing F6 when prompted.

ash_hammond - 29/5/07 at 04:13 PM

That would of been my reply - beat me to it



Also try looking on WD's web site for an updated sata driver

Keith Weiland - 29/5/07 at 05:52 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Jubal
On some motherboards you need to install SATA drivers before running the XP install. The XP installer gives you the option of doing so by pressing F6 when prompted.

While a good answer, I would have to disagree with you one this one. If he needed SATA drivers for that particular motherboard it wouldn't get halfway through formatting before it bombed out.

I would ask are you doing a full format or a quick format, If you are doing a full format then I would suggest doing a quick format instead and see if that helps.

You could also try wiping it and formatting it on another computer to NTFS or even FAT32 and then transfer it back and install XP on it.

You might also try creating a smaller partition size, say 20gb and installing to that then either use the other space as a second partition or use something like partition magic to expand the partition to the full drive after the fact.

You might also try using some of the free space on the hard drive to try out Ubuntu Linux or any one of a Plethora of other Desktop Linux Distributions.

Good luck

tks - 29/5/07 at 06:08 PM

look for driver updates and load those drivers into the setup. maybe the fault is the drivers wich are shipped with XP's install.

the driver updates arent never ever from the drive manufacture sow you should digg up the brand of your motherboard.

Also Format as NTFS

Tks

viatron - 29/5/07 at 06:33 PM

he hasnt upograded the memory as well has he? had a similar problem with a customers machine recentley, memory was faulty,
Mac

Jubal - 29/5/07 at 09:16 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Keith Weiland
quote:
Originally posted by Jubal
On some motherboards you need to install SATA drivers before running the XP install. The XP installer gives you the option of doing so by pressing F6 when prompted.

While a good answer, I would have to disagree with you one this one. If he needed SATA drivers for that particular motherboard it wouldn't get halfway through formatting before it bombed out.


It can't hurt to see if updated SATA drivers sort it. What if the built in XP drivers have a bug? It would still be my first angle of attack, followed by the good stuff you posted.

kit_car_kid06 - 30/5/07 at 07:57 AM

quote:
Originally posted by viatron
he hasnt upograded the memory as well has he? had a similar problem with a customers machine recentley, memory was faulty,
Mac


Funny you should say that - no he hasn't upgraded the memory, but before the computer wouldn't even boot up, so he took a stick of RAM out which has enabled us to get this far.

kit_car_kid06 - 30/5/07 at 08:06 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Keith Weiland
While a good answer, I would have to disagree with you one this one. If he needed SATA drivers for that particular motherboard it wouldn't get halfway through formatting before it bombed out.

I would ask are you doing a full format or a quick format, If you are doing a full format then I would suggest doing a quick format instead and see if that helps.

Good luck


my thoughts exactly Keith - my brother couldn't even see his SATA drive when he connected his, and had to get SATA drivers - so I knew my friend wasn't having the same problem when I found out that he could actually attempt formatting it.

We've tried just doing a quick format, that went fine. Even downloaded the WD diagnostic software and wrote zeros to the drive - so it should be completely clean now.

(funny thing was before writing zeros, the drive size was about 148Gig, after writing zeros to the drive, xp setup showed it was only about 136Gig?!)

Still no joy with installing xp though

[Edited on 30/5/07 by kit_car_kid06]

Keith Weiland - 30/5/07 at 01:43 PM

Try resetting the BIOS to failsafe defaults then unplug anything that isnt required like PCI modems and floppy drive etc. Just have the essentials connected.