Help Please Re Install XP on SATA drive

I've built a new PC as below.

I've put 3 partitions on the 80 Gb boot drive, and two on a 120 Gb drive using Maxtor's Maxblast 3 program. They formatted ok and the partitions show for the both drives.

I'm having difficulty in locating the Sata driver, so that the drive will be recognised for installation of Win XP. I've tried a couple of files from the Gigabyte site but the message keeps coming up when trying to install XP to press F6 and insert floppy. It then says that the hard drive doesn't exist.

I've read that the sata driver can be copied from the Gigabyte CD that came with the motherboard. I've tried some without success.

Any help/advice on this would be greatly appreciated.


2.8GHz Pentium 4. Gigabyte GA-81K1100 Mobo. Win XP Pro 1Gb DDR Ram 80Gb Sata Boot Drive. 120Gb SATA HD and 80Gb IDE HD.

Thanks Mike

Which SATA controller are you using,if you are using the ICH5 controller you dont need a driver unless you are using raid. if you are using the silicon image controller the driver is on the CD,look on page 3 of the sata raid function book for the silicon image chipset. you need to set the bios to sata and first boot device as scsi . DOUG

Hi Doug,
Thanks for your reply.

DOUG said:

Which SATA controller are you using,if you are using the ICH5 controller you dont need a driver unless you are using raid. if you are using the silicon image controller the driver is on the CD,look on page 3 of the sata raid function book for the silicon image chipset. you need to set the bios to sata and first boot device as scsi . DOUG

Click to expand...

I've tried this, taken from the Gigabyte CD:-

a:\TxtSetup.oem
a:\WIN2K_XP\iteraid.sys
a:\WIN2K_XP\iteraid.inf
a:\WIN2K_XP\iteraid.cat

I also tried the ICH5 controller from the Intel site.

As I have an IDE Disk, I understand I have to have raid enabled in order to be able to boot from the SATA Drive.

I don't think the silicon image controller is an option with the GA-81K1100, a sata raid function book wasn't included.

I'm now finding after start up before the F6 page, the following error comes up.

File\i386\biosinfo.inf could not be loaded. Error code 32768

The Bios settings:-
Advanced Bios
ist Boot HDD0
2nd FLoppy
3rd CD Tried a few variations with the same error

Integrated Peripherals
On Chip Primary Enabled
On Chip secondary Disabled
On Chip SATA Manual
SATA Port 0 SATA Port 0
SATA Port 1 SATA Port 1

Thanks again for your help. If you or others can offer any further advice I would appreciate it. I'm rather out of my depth on this.

Cheers
Mike

Have you tried setting the first boot device as SCSI? Sometimes boards will only boot a SATA RAID with it set to SCSI ( not HDD0 ).

Have you tried any other 2K cds? ( sounds like the error is more to do with something other than the raid driver )

K1ll1nT1m3 said:

Have you tried setting the first boot device as SCSI? Sometimes boards will only boot a SATA RAID with it set to SCSI ( not HDD0 ).

Have you tried any other 2K cds? ( sounds like the error is more to do with something other than the raid driver )

Click to expand...

K1ll1nT1m3 Thanks for your reply.

I have tried setting the first boot device as SCSI as a few days ago I found that SCSI had to be at least somewhere in the boot order. I only have Win XP Pro to try.

Incidently as I was getting more and more frustrated and infuriated with this problem I posted an appeal for help on the Motherboard/Gigabyte/Intel forum on this board, which seemed more ppropriate.

As you suspect it sounds like the error is more to do with something other than the raid driver. Perhaps you would care to have a look at the discussion. I would welcome any further participation from you.

Cheers
Mike

Im not sure on that board, but on mine, if I press CTRL+F1 in the main BIOS screen, I can open a few extra settings. I am able to boot from a SATA without it being in a RAID. I am able to set the "SATA 0 port 0" to "SATA 0 use IDE primary master". What BIOS version are you using? Have you tried running the manufactures HDD diagnostic program on your HDD?

Mike2952 said:

I've tried this, taken from the Gigabyte CD:-

a:\TxtSetup.oem
a:\WIN2K_XP\iteraid.sys
a:\WIN2K_XP\iteraid.inf
a:\WIN2K_XP\iteraid.cat


Mike

Click to expand...

these commands are directed at the floppy drive. were these files on cd? or on floppy? if they are on cd, you would have to use the drive letter for the cdrom, and not the floppy.


also, if you are going to run a hdd on a raid controllers channel, i would think you are going to need the raid drivers to do this.

you might also like to enter your raid bios and see if there is a setting for this as well, even though you aren't creating a raid array.

i would also like to add, that typically you would set the cdrom as your first boot device, if you are installing windows xp, and select the scsi, or raid controller as the second boot device.

K1ll1nT1m3 said:

Im not sure on that board, but on mine, if I press CTRL+F1 in the main BIOS screen, I can open a few extra settings. I am able to boot from a SATA without it being in a RAID. I am able to set the "SATA 0 port 0" to "SATA 0 use IDE primary master". What BIOS version are you using? Have you tried running the manufactures HDD diagnostic program on your HDD?

Click to expand...

Thanks for the CTRL+F1 tip, which I was'nt aware of. Using that I tried setting "SATA 0 use IDE primary master". This brought the same error code up.

I flashed the Bios to F8b a few days ago. THis morning I downloaded and ran Maxtors Powermax diagnostic utility. It failed to detect the 2 SATA drives, just the IDE drive and dvd rom and burner. I repartitioned and formatted the 80 Gb Sata which will be the boot drive, this was using Maxtors Maxblast 3 utility. a retest with Powermax gave the same result.

madsam,
Thanks for your reply.
Quote
these commands are directed at the floppy drive. were these files on cd? or on floppy? if they are on cd, you would have to use the drive letter for the cdrom, and not the floppy.

They were on floppy, but I've since found out that they are not required in this case. I have an ICH5R SATA RAID driver on floppy for use at the F6 prompt, which i can't seem to get to at the moment.

Quote
i would also like to add, that typically you would set the cdrom as your first boot device, if you are installing windows xp, and select the scsi, or raid controller as the second boot device.

Yes I agree with that, and was able to do it with the original bios. With F8b the option is shown to be able to select scsi but it is not possible.

Quote
you might also like to enter your raid bios and see if there is a setting for this as well, even though you aren't creating a raid array.

I've tried the Sata raid function enabled, which brings up the same error. The general opinion seems to be that thi should be disabled.

Here are my bios settings
Standard CMOS Features
IDE Channel 0 Master Maxtor 6Y080L0
IDE Channel 0 Slave None
IDE Channel 1 Master Asus DVD - ROM
IDE Channel 1 Slave Pioneer DVD-RW
IDE Channel 2 Master Maxtor 6Y080M0
IDE Channel 3 " Maxtor 6Y120M0

Advance bioos features
Hard disk priority
1 Bootable add in cards
2 CH2 : Maxtor 6Y080M0
3 Ch3 : Maxtor 6Y120M0
4 Ch0 : Maxtor 6Y080L0

First boot device CDRom
2nd boot device Floppy
3rd boot device disabled

Integrated peripherals

On Chip Primary PCI IDE Enabled
On Chip Secondary PCI IDE Enabled
IDE1 Conductor Cable Auto
IDE2 Conductor Cable Auto
IDE Primary Master P10 Auto
IDE Secondary Master P10 Auto
IDE Primary Master UDMA disabled
IDE Primary Slave P10 Disabled
On Cip Sata Manual
Sata port 0 configure as Sata Port 0
Sata port 1 configure as Sata Port 1
Sata Raid Function Disabled

Sorry for the long reply, but it seemed only fair to you guys to give you as much info as i thought relevant.

Thanks again for your help so far.

Cheers
Mike

So, even if you set the SATA to use IDE primary master, the install errors before the F6 option? Have you tried running the diagnostic with the drive set to IDE primary master? If I set the SATA to use IDE primary master, the program works for me. Thats odd.

K1ll1nT1m3 said:

So, even if you set the SATA to use IDE primary master, the install errors before the F6 option? Have you tried running the diagnostic with the drive set to IDE primary master? If I set the SATA to use IDE primary master, the program works for me. Thats odd.

Click to expand...

I just tried setting the SATA to use IDE primary master. PowerMax now recognises the two Sata drives but not the IDE Drive.

tried a 90 second test on the 80Gb Sata (boot drive) and that passed OK.

I then tried to install XP with those same settings, but it brought up the usual error.

Mike

Do you always get the same biosinfo.ini error, or does it change sometimes?

Can you install onto the PATA ( no SATAs at all ) when its set to use the PATA HDD?

K1ll1nT1m3 said:

Do you always get the same biosinfo.ini error, or does it change sometimes?

Can you install onto the PATA ( no SATAs at all ) when its set to use the PATA HDD?

Click to expand...

Its always the same biosinfo.ini error.

I've not tried to install on to the PATA. Its in a removable drive caddy, and I don't want to lose the data.

Mike

When the SATA is mapped as an IDE, it should install fine. ( it might not want to boot, but thats down the road yet )

Is the cd scrathed at all? Can you get another XP cd to try? Or try that cd on another HDD?

Maybe try deleting the partitions on a SATA and try to install again ( setting up the partitions from the XP cd ) on one empty SATA drive ( mapped as an IDE )? Just to make sure its not a partition problem.

K1ll1nT1m3 said:

When the SATA is mapped as an IDE, it should install fine. ( it might not want to boot, but thats down the road yet )

Is the cd scrathed at all? Can you get another XP cd to try? Or try that cd on another HDD?

Maybe try deleting the partitions on a SATA and try to install again ( setting up the partitions from the XP cd ) on one empty SATA drive ( mapped as an IDE )? Just to make sure its not a partition problem.

Click to expand...

The CD is brand new, I tried it in the old pc I'm using at the moment and let it run as far as I dare, so I think its OK

I'll try deleting the partitions on the SATA and try again. Will let you know in due course.

Many thanks
Mike

so how many harddrives do you have? one 80 and 120?

because here:

IDE Channel 0 Master Maxtor 6Y080L0

Click to expand...

that said that your 80 gig IDE drive is the primary master. you want the SATA drive you are installing windows to to say this. so you might want to switch the cable on the ide drive to a slave or not on the ide primary channel. also make sure that after you hit ctr f1 you set all the sata and ide setting to what you are going to use. e.g. not raid.

Hi Stan,
thanks for your reply

stan03 said:

so how many harddrives do you have? one 80 and 120?]

Click to expand...

1 80 Gb Sata In 3 partitions - Boot drive (hopefully)
1 120 Gb Sata In 2 partitions
1 80 Gb IDE in a Drive Caddy

that said that your 80 gig IDE drive is the primary master. you want the SATA drive you are installing windows to to say this. so you might want to switch the cable on the ide drive to a slave or not on the ide primary channel. also make sure that after you hit ctr f1 you set all the sata and ide setting to what you are going to use. e.g. not raid.

Click to expand...

I felt quite positive after reading your post. It all made sense.

I. I changed the IDE drive from Master to slave on the primary channel. (Jumper change) That didn't work.....usual error code
File\i386\biosinfo.inf could not be loaded. Error code 32768

2. Then I switched cables Primary to secondary and altered the drived jumper back to Master with the same error.

Reverted back to the first change, and ran Fdisk this revealed that the IDE drive was first in the chain, so I changed the
Sata Port 0 Configure as to 'IDE Primary Master'

This didn't work either, slightly different error came up:-
File\i386\biosinfo.inf could not be loaded. Error code 128000

Hope you can make some sense of this.

Thanks again
Mike

Maybe this would help some?

I would think a low level format would take care of any possibility of a corrupted file still being on the drive. I doubt it is memory error. Those are usually a "page fault in non paged area" errors.

edit: Im about out of ideas. The only other thing I can think of would be to try and copy the i386 folder to a formated partition and run setup.exe from the dos line. ( i doubt it would work though )

Thanks for all your help over the last few days, and also from Doug and Sam. In desperatioon I phoned my components supplier, and he very kindly offered to to let his Techie sort it all out, and will arrange to collect and return the PC FOC.

I would have liked to have sorted it out myself, and suppose it will be something simple in the end. There are so many different parts of the setup that can make it fail.

I am very grateful to you all for your time spent trying to help me .

Cheers
Mike

K1ll1nT1m3 said:

Maybe this would help some?

I would think a low level format would take care of any possibility of a corrupted file still being on the drive. I doubt it is memory error. Those are usually a "page fault in non paged area" errors.

edit: Im about out of ideas. The only other thing I can think of would be to try and copy the i386 folder to a formated partition and run setup.exe from the dos line. ( i doubt it would work though )

Click to expand...

Sorry I couldnt help more. Let us know how it turns out. Good luck.