Hi, New to this form. I had many years in the IT business before I retired from it a bunch of years ago but my friends use me as free tech support. Usually, it is easy but I have never seen this one before. I bud ask me to re-install his xp..the computer was a bit flaky..ok, i said. He gave me the orginal package of XP and off it go. Before I do anything, I quickly brouse the hardware config so I can d'load the latest drivers. Anyway , his hard drive was labelled a SCSI . Huh ? haven;t seen one of those for years in a personal computer. I was curious so I popped the hood and found a SATA Baracuda st3160812as drive. How could this drive be running on scsi drivers. So I went to install and I got to the place where I can format the drive and go on and the machine does not recoginize the hard drive. Sorry for taking so long but the question is ...how do I get this drive to run on SATA drivers again ?? Just do a format ? Help...this guy is dying to get his box back again.. Ian
Welcome to HWF When Windows XP was released, there weren't any SATA drives in that time. So the hardware category SATA doesn't exist in XP. Therefore these drives are labeled as a SCSI drive. Now there are 2 ways to fix the installation problem: 1) Enter the BIOS, and see if the SATA controller is set to RAID. If so, change it to a regular setting (so that RAID is not used). Then the installation should work fine. 2) If Step 1 doesn't work or the option is not available, then go to the website of the motherboard manufacturer, and search for a RAID or SATA driver. That driver (driver files) should be put on a floppy disk (read instructions). Make sure that the CD drive is loaded BEFORE the floppy drive. Then insert the floppy disk, and boot from the CD to launch Windows Setup. Look at the status bar for the message "press F6 to load additional SCSI drivers". When that message appears, press F6. You should now be able to select the SATA controller driver from the floppy disk. If you're not sure which one you need, refer to the manual of the motherboard. When an SATA controller is set to SATA, it should work fine without additional drivers. But when it has been set to RAID mode, it needs additional drivers to be detected. But remember to not set it to IDE mode because that will disable all devices that are connected to the IDE connectors.
Wow..... Thanks so much..and I thought I was going nutz. I will update after once I work on the box again. Grassy
OK.. The MB is a MSI 7103 which is still being sold as a 661fm3-v. I am feeling like a dork now.. I have downloaded all the drivers for this board but none are for a sata hard drive..here is the link I have.. MSI -- MICRO-STAR INT'L CO., LTD. Should I look to see what driver is running now and download that on to a floppy ? Would it be the driver only or what else would I need for the "F6 install" to work ? What am I missing ? Thanks Grassy
