Problem recognizing sata hard drive

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lynx6200

New Member
I have an Abit AV8 mother board with 2 sata and 2 ide ports. The OS is running off the IDE drive, but I am trying to get the SATA drive to work, for loading windows.

While the board seems to recognize the SATA ports, drivers are required for them, and It took some work to get the SATA drive to show up (by moving the jumpers around). I can also boot to the SATA drive in Bios.

However, when I boot to the windows cd for setup, it only recognizes my IDE drive, so I see how I can get windows setup. The drive has been formatted and can be accessed through the IDE drive.

Thanks for any help.
 
Have you installed the SATA/RAID drivers? They should be on a floppy disk that came with the motherboard.

Also, just to double check, you can see the drives in the bios, correct? Or during POST?
 
The drivers are installed through windows on the primary drive. When in windows, I can see the sata drive fine, and use it like a slave drive.

Bios doesnt show the SATA drive is connected, only option in Bios regarding the onboard SATA driver,is an option to choose it as the primary boot device, which works but says no OS found, but of course on the OS installation, it doesnt recognize the drive.

Only thing I can think of is something with the jumpers.
 
SATA drives don't use jumpers...well, maybe to set to SATA150 if it's a 300 drive, but that mobo should handle either just fine.

Something strange is up, though, if you see it in Windows but not the bios??? Well, that should be a fairly clear indication that something is working... Did you try the drivers like I said DURING the windows installation?
 
How do you mean install the drivers during instalation? I have the drivers on the m/b cd. Dont know how I would install em during instalation, dont have a floppy either, maybe i canuse my thumb drive. Ill just have to play around I suppose.

Thanks
 
invest in a floppy or make your thumb drive bootable and trick the system into thinking it is a floppy. it needs to be loaded during installation when it asked you to hit f6.
 
The problem seen there is easy solved. When you boot up with the board's cd or run it while in Windows there should be an option to create a sata-raid floppy. Asus has that seen in the menu when loaded. That will look for a A drive namely a floppy to copy the needed drivers onto a 3 1/2". There's also a driver folder for burning them to a cd-r. But you have to get the correct ones that way.

Once you have a bootable disk made up hit the F6 when booting up with the XP installation disk and those will be loaded. Hopefully if you a good burn you won't a driver error and be able to proceed. Make sure you that drive set as the first in the bios liist of drives and unplug the ide drive(s) you are running. The drivers have to loaded this way for the installer itself to see the drive.
 
yea not hard, if u dont have the disc with the sata/raid drivers on it go to the manufactures site and download them and put the needed files on a floppy, and like they said when ur xp starts to load first screen push f6 should read the sata drivers off floppy and allow u to install on to it.. make sure to do a full format on the floppy, i did quick and it did not work for but i did it full and it worked fine
 
The attempt at downloading drivers directly from Asus proved pointless on the other build when tried with two different floppies fully formatted in Windows. When the sata was installed here the problem at first was seeing one driver error and the option seen on the board's cd itself was then used for formatting the floppy there.

Once Windows was rebooted the option for making the disk up was then tried with Windows running. This proved to be the method that worked when the system was then shutdown and the two ide drives were then unplugged for the stand alone installation. The drivers loaded right up and the XP installer saw the drive immediately.

The problem now is that the friend has grown accustomed to running the older ide and doesn't want to be bothered pulling the case out and reconnecting the 200gb sata he originally wanted as a stand alone to begin with. Tell me if that sounds a little lame there. :rolleyes: To upgrade a family member's system with a new case now a new drive to replace the 80gb ide will have to be bought instead of being able to put the 120gb to use again. The 80gb will remain in the old case probably to upgrade a student's old 98 system.
 
I ended up installing windows on the sata drive using another computer.
As for the f6 thing, I tried that, copied the drivers to a disk (the cd doesn't have a create disk thing), but windows didn't like it what it saw on the disk.

So, now that windows is on the drive, I put it back on the abit board, and it recognizes it, starts loading windows for a second or two, than restarts, almost as if it lost power. The power supply is good, and so is the disk, it will boot when I put it in another computer. As for the jumpers, I messed around with it, and it only works when the jumper is on the 3rd spot away from the molex adapter (its a western digital). So, at this point, im kind of stumped.
 
You can't install windows to a hard drive in a different computer that the hard drive is intended to be in. You have to install windows with the drive in the computer thats its gonna be in. When you install windows its sets up drivers for that particular motherboard thats in the computer. Now that you have switched computers it doesn't recognize the new hardware and gives you problems... You will have to reinstall windows trying to get the sata drivers installed at the F6 prompt or use a slipstreamed XP cd with the drivers already included on it. No way around it.
 
Your Biggest problem is the bios is not seeing the drive, you can press F6 and load Sata drivers all day long and it wont help, the drivers are for the windows install not the motherboard. On a W/D Sata drive you should not put any jumpers at all on the pins unless you want it to run in 1.5 mode and that is the second set of pins from the left.
 
Okay, well, I attempted to update the bios thinking that might help. The abit board has a flash program, and I chose the file (downloaded from the website), and it got 3/4 of the way through, than said "error, restart bios". So, i restarted the computer, and now all it does is give a continuous beep with no display. Theres a post code, 41, which indicates floppy drive connection, but no floppy or cable connected. I think the bios could be fried? Any help appreciated.
(note, Ive tried all the troubleshooting, cleared cmos, disconnected devices, etc.)
 
Can I ask how you flashed the bios without a floppy drive or Windows running to use a winflash tool? Did you go into the boot order and press enter on the "hard drives" to make sure that the sata was first in the order and not cardbus or something else? If you don't have a floppy you can disable the floppy search and floppy controller in the bios as well.
 
Thats the problem, cant get into bios or anything. Right now, with everything disconnected even, except for the vid card, I still cant get it to boot. It turns on, beeps, than gives a steady continuous beeeeep . Tried pressing del, and ins at startup, but nothing, there is also no display. The post code reads 41 (41 Initialize FDD device C3->25->26 -> Stop at 40 Floppy detect error Unplug FDD cable check error or check BIOS settings). There is no floppy installed, and no floppy cable attached, maybe the bios is burnt.

Oh, and I flashed bios with the abit flash software that came with cd, its installed in windows, (so yes, windows was running).
 
It sounds like a bad flash or hardware fault. Were you able to run Windows after the winflash program was used? What model Abit is that? That will tell whether it's an Award bios. The information here is from the FAQ section seen at Abit's support page for the #41 error code. Nothing on a continuous beeping is seen there.
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]41[/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Initialize FDD device[/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]C3->25->26 -> Stop at 40[/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Floppy detect error[/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Unplug FDD cable check error or check BIOS settings[/FONT]
http://www.abit-usa.com/faq/

A constinuous high pitched beeping generally indicates an overheated cpu. You can go through the Award beep codes seen at http://www.bioscentral.com/beepcodes/awardbeep.htm
 
Thanks PC eye. I know what you mean about the beep referring to a hot cpu, but I don't think thats it since that fan and heatsink are brand new and still working. I looked through the abit forum, seems that maybe the bios chip is messed up and could be replaced? They sell the chips for about $15, but Ive never dealt with a bio chip before. But I guess thats my only option, or get a new board which would be like $50.
 
Is the fan on the sink working? You could have a bad thermal pad even on a new hsf to contend with. That would explain an overheated cpu. If you could even borrow an internal floppy or burn a bootable cd you could try the manual method of reflashing the bios to see if that corrects a bad flash. I always keep the old 3 1/2" floppy drive around even if in a 5 1/4" drive bay adapter. Those cost about $2 on top of the $14-15 seen for floppy drives.

For replacing the eprom you would need a special DIP tool to compress the delicate pins for extracting and inserting a repl;acement. That gets a little more costly. The floppy in the 5 1/4" adapter is something on the other hand you would have available for times like this. Another thing to do when updating a bios is first create a backup of the current in case...???
 
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