So I just built my new system with the following parts and am trying now to install Windows, but it keeps giving me this error message: "Marvell adapter initializing bios version ..xyz... Adapter 1 No hard disk is detected" and then after that it says... "reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device" My components are: ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard Intel Core i7-950 Bloomfield 3.06GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80601950 OCZ Platinum 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Low Voltage Desktop Memory Model OCZ3P1600LV6GK Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000HLFS 300GB 10000 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - OEM (system drive) Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drives - OEM (X2) LG Black Blu-ray/HD DVD-ROM & 16X DVD±R DVD Burner SATA Model GGC-H20L EVGA 017-P3-1294-AR GeForce GTX 295 1792MB 896 Bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 64-bit I only have my CDrom drive and 1 HD connected via SATA cables at the moment. Then I went into BIOS and set the boot priority to go CDROM, then HDD. And it still gives me this error message. On the Main Page of BIOS it lists SATA 1, SATA 2, SATA 3 etc all the way to SATA 6. And under SATA 1 it show the HDD and Under SATA 2 it shows the CDROM drive. So I know it sees them. Also under "storage configuration" there is a section called "Configure SATA as" and the options are: IDE, RAID, and AHCI. It's currenly on IDE. What could be the problem? Thanks for anyone who can help.
Windows has only very primitive SATA support out of the box. Because of this rather frustrating limitation, many motherboard manufactures give you the option of running your SATA drives in slower IDE emulation mode which Windows should be able to cope with. Otherwise, if you want to run your HDD(s) with full AHCI support, you will need to hit F6 as the installer starts up and provide a floppy disk with the appropriate SATA drivers.
Thanks for replying. Windows isn't even on my machine yet. That's the problem. Everything is brand new. The system is having trouble detecting the HDD or DVD drive. I can't even install windows yet. I'm not concerned about running it in either IDE or AHCI modes as I don't even know what those are. But either way it's not starting up at all. So is this even a Windows problem?
What operating system, do you suspect, that the Windows installer runs? Mac OS? Yeah, sorry if I was unclear, but I was referring to Windows, and to be more specific, its installer. In that light please re-read the post I've made above and if you wish, take the advice I've posted there. Best regards, -AT
Well, either you can grab a USB floppy drive, or you could try IDE emulation for your SATA devices if the BIOS supports it. That would at least get you installed, at which point you could install the drivers and set it back to real SATA mode in the BIOS. Another option would be spinning a new installer CD using nLite - Deployment Tool for the bootable Unattended Windows installation and including the SATA driver you need.
