Single Hard Drive Sata install for Gigabyte K8N

[upallnighter]

I dunno if this question has been asked before, I've looked through as much of the forum as I could, so here it is...

I have recently bought a Gigabyte K8N Ultra 9 939 motherboard and want to install a single WD 160 gig sata hard drive with windows XP. I have tried to do this but haven't been able to get the drive to be detected. The board has two sets of sata controllers, nForce4 and Sil. I've read that alot of people are having issues with this board, but haven't been able to find a definitive solution to the problem. Checked the Gigabyte site FAQ too. Does anyone have a tried and true way, from bios settings to final windows boot, that will work.

 

[Alex81388]

Well, I have that board - and its a dream.

I am assuming you are trying to install XP on it, but I need more information.

If you are, you need the floppy that came with it for the SATA/SCSI drivers for the mobo. When you start the XP Install CD you have to hit F6, and put the floppy in, and follow the prompts of loading SATA drivers.

And btw, for me it doesn't matter which SATA connector I am using.

 

[upallnighter]

You are correct, I am trying to install Windows XP. I read somewhere that this board is sata native so that you didn't have to do the F6 press and install drivers. So I ran the XP setup CD and it went to the reboot remove disks part after everything is installed and then rebooted. However,after the reboot it will not recognize that the drive is there, even though it installed Windows on it. And I have tried to run the Win XP setup again, but when I hit F6 it does nothing and continues to hit F2 for recovery. I have a PS2 keyboard plugged in, it lights up and allows me to navigate the bios screens so I don't think that the keyboard is the culprit. I've tried changing which sata controller the drive is plugged into because like I said I read alot of different solutions to the problem and many involved where it was plugged in. I tried to do as much research as possible to rule out the obvious, so as not to be too noobish. If there is any other information that would help I will try to provide it as fast as I can.

 

[Alex81388]

When you hit F6, you won't notice anything happen for a while. From 3-6 minutes stuff is still loading. Just make sure you hit it a couple times while you have the option and let it go, it will walk to you through it when it is done loading all of it's other files.

 

[upallnighter]

Alright, I'll try that out and post back and let you know, it'll probably be a couple days because I'll be traveling and away from the machine. Thanks alot for your help.