*HELP* Installing a Seagate SATA Harddrive on a MSI K9AGM2

[PC eye]

Like I say when it reboots the first time you need to boot to the harddrive from then on. Not back to the cd, your just booting to the cd over and over.

Booting from the hard drive before the setup files are even copied to it?

Something is stalling during the installation process forcing the system to reboot before the setup is completed there. If the disk is free of any scratches or smudge marks and you have run a lens cleaner you may be seeing the drive itself or a flaky cable being the cause.

 

[StrangleHold]

Booting from the hard drive before the setup files are even copied to it?

Nobody said that! I dont know where you come up with this stuff? I said after it rebooted the first time. It copies the set up files before it reboots.

 

[PC eye]

Apparently the system is rebooting there before the files are fully copied for some reason. The sata drive itself may be the problem or some other problem is now being seen to cause the sudden restarts during the initial installation phase. When you can't get to the spot to enter name, business, etc. you have to look at other things other then changing the boot order.

 

[StrangleHold]

He wasn't having sudden restarts, he just keeps booting back to the cd after the restart.

 

[atech]

When you did this it loaded the Sata drivers and formated the drive, it cant format the drive without seeing it. Just when it rebooting you booted back to the cd instead of the harddrive. Try this again but boot to the harddrive when it reboots the first time. I still dont know why a SB600 chip would use a ULi Sata driver but it seemed to work that time.

If I have my old hard drive and have the BIOS setting as:

PCI IDE BusMaster - enabled

OnChip SATA Channel - enabled

OnChip SATA Type - native IDE

Then the new drive will show up as Local Disk (E) under " My Cpmputer " but as only a 127GB drive and not a 300 GB drive which thats what it is but when I disconnect my old hard drive and put in windows XP pro to format the new hard drive so I can do a clean install of windows it goes just fine until I hit "F6" so I can install the drive then it asks me to insert the floppy which on the floppy is has these files:

in the root of the floppy it has:

ahcix64
ahcix86
txtsetup.oem

and it has two folders named x64 & x86

x64 folder has these files:

ahcix64
ahcix64
ahcix64

and x86 folder has these files:

ahcix86
ahcix86
ahcix86

and when I press "S" when asked to if gives me these two options:

option 1.) ATI AHCI Compatible RAID controller - x64

option 2.) ATI AHCI Compatible RAID controller - x86

so I select the x64 controller and then it starts checking the floppy for the drivers and the problem I am having is that it keeps saying that \x64\achix64.sys is corrupted.

BUT
for the heck of it, instead of selecting ATI AHCI Compatible RAID controller - x64

I desided to select the ATI AHCI Compatible RAID controller - x86 option to see if it would load the \x86\achix86.sys file and it did load the file and the next screen came up saying " IT CAN NOT FIND A HARD DISK "

 

[StrangleHold]

Well the reason your only seeing 128gbs is its a older XP cd, after SP2 is installed it will see the whole drive and you can partition the rest. To not go through that, you can Slipstream SP2 to your XP cd and it will see the whole drive when you install.
Did this board come with a floppy with the Sata drivers or did you have to make one from the boards CD?

 

[atech]

Well the reason your only seeing 128gbs is its a older XP cd, after SP2 is installed it will see the whole drive and you can partition the rest. To not go through that, you can Slipstream SP2 to your XP cd and it will see the whole drive when you install.
Did this board come with a floppy with the Sata drivers or did you have to make one from the boards CD?

I have SP2 installed, but the board didnt come with a floppy I made three floppys to try and get this harddrive setup, on the first two floppy I made from the CD that came with the board on the CD it has a folder called IDE and within that folder it had two folders one was called RAID and the other folder was called SATA. The folder locations on the CD for both folders are as followed:

folder 1.) D:\IDE\Silicon_Image\Sil3132\RAID

folder 2.) D:\IDE\Silicon_Image\Sil3132\SATA

The third floppy I downloaded the drivers off of MSI's website and tried it and after I selected the ATI AHCI Compatible RAID controller - x64 option the next screen would say:

\x64\achix64.sys is corrupted.

and like in my last post for the heck of it instead of selecting ATI AHCI Compatible RAID controller - x64

I desided to select the ATI AHCI Compatible RAID controller - x86 option to see if it would load the \x86\achix86.sys file and it did load the file and the next screen came up saying " IT CAN NOT FIND A HARD DISK "

 

[StrangleHold]

Between those I would give this one a try

folder 2.) D:\IDE\Silicon_Image\Sil3132\SATA

 

[atech]

I tried both options and if I remember that one did go through an after it went thorugh it would load the windows XP files again and the next screen would give me three options and I would select press enter to install winodws and the next screen would come up and then say:

Setup did not find any hard disks drives installed in your computer

I have been talking to a MSI tech about my problem and this is what they said:

Dear Customer, One last suggestion please update the bios to the latest version that will be attached in this response. Just be sure to clear the CMOS right after the bios update then again enter bios load the Optimized Defaults set up bios for raid then save and exit create raid array again delete any array that maybe created then save it and try another installation using the latest drivers you got from our web site. If issue persists then go out to the link below and request an RMA number or if you just got the board contact the reseller for a replacment. Thank you, http://www.msicomputer.com/support/CustomerS.asp

Well, last night I did decide to update the BIOS with no luck but I didnt clear the CMOS right after I updated the BIOS. I will try that right now..