Windows setup doesn't see hard drive

[sayaprayer]

I'm trying to reformat my folks PC, the windows xp setup loads, but then when I go to reformat it doesn't see a hard disk. I go into the bios and the hard disk is there. The drive is SATA if that matters. Any ideas to get this to work?

 

[Osiris]

Sounds like you need the sata drivers for that HDD and XP dont have them. Do you have a cd that came with their pc or is it a custom built one? You may need to see what kind of sata drive it is and then go to the mantufactures website, download the drivers, then either put them on a floppy or slipstream them into a new XP cd.

 

[sayaprayer]

How does that work then if I have the drivers on a seperate disk? I mean the drivers should be installed right now cause I'm running xp. But I want to reinstall xp and it doesn't prompt me for drivers ever.

 

[Osiris]

During install, you will see a message on the bottom to install 3rd party drivers and to press F6, then when it prompts you for the driver, take the XP cd out, put the driver cd in, then when its finished, it will ask you to put the XP cd back in to finish the install

 

[KSoD]

Also check the BIOS. Check the setup of the HDD. If it is ACHI XP will not recognize it unless you use the 3rd party driver isntaller or nlite the SATA drivers into the install. If you can switch it off of ACHI to IDE then XP should recognize it with not issue.

 

[EricB]

your mobo cd should have a floppy disc maker

 

[Black Falcon 921]

man thats a little wierd though most computers I have worked with never needed a driver for the sata to function through windows. Hmmmm..... It does sound like a driver issue though. if your bios sees it then I would think your dealing with a driver issue.

 

[EricB]

man thats a little wierd though most computers I have worked with never needed a driver for the sata to function through windows. Hmmmm..... It does sound like a driver issue though. if your bios sees it then I would think your dealing with a driver issue.

it's not wierd. sata came after xp.

 

[Black Falcon 921]

I know sata came after xp but like I said theres very few computers that I have delt with that I had to press f6 and install the driver to when I installed xp. Raid driver sure ide cotroller cards sure but not so many sata drives at least not for me any ways.