New computer build - Windows installation can't find the hardrive

fonebone

Solid State Member
Messages
16
Location
UK
Hi:

New computer build:

Gigabyte 970A-DS3P AM3+ DDR3 motherboard
WD 1TB SATA lll Desktop Hardrive
Seagate Barracuda 250GB SATA ll Desktop Hardrive
AMD FX 4300 PILEDRIVER 3.8GHZ QUAD CORE SOCKET AM3+ CPU
Gigabyte GV-N210SL-1GB GeForce 210 Graphics Card
Crucial CT51264BA160BJ 4GB DDR3 SDRAM 1600MHz x2
Alpine Blue 700W 38 AMP Single Rail PSU

Turned it on for the first time last night, lovely... Spent 6 hours trying to get Windows 7 to find any hard drive...

If I dumb the BIOS down to IDE and Legacy boot mode I can manage to get the Install Windows GUI to appear but it won't see any hard drive... It will recognise a USB stick with the SATA AHCI Driver unzipped drivers on but only if I untick "Hide drivers that are not compatible with hardware on this computer". Anyway, I select one of the four 'AMD SATA Controller(C;\SATA_AHCI Driver\AHCI_w7\W764A\amd_sata.inf)' and click Next and after it looks to be installing the driver all I get is "No drives were found. Click Load Driver to provide a mass storage driver for installation."

It's a new Western Digital hardrive... I had it in my regular computer and fully partitioned it with NTFS default settings and left a completely empty 70GB C:\ drive all ready for a fresh Windows installation...in theory. There is also a 250GB SATA ll hardrive in there just for data... It doesn't see that one either.

If I leave the BIOS at AHCI it doesn't get past the Starting Windows screen...

Any ideas? Thanks in advance?
 
Thanks for the reply, Joe... but, nothing new there, I was in the BIOS and the manual for 6 hours last night - that's what I'm doing here. I'm stuck...

That's what I wrote ten minutes ago, then I thought, to be fair, I'll just turn it on again and load the default BIOS... and Bingo!! Joe wins tonights Star Prize... I'm looking at the installation setup with all the partitions displayed !!

Couldn't have done it without you - Many thanks, Joe.
 
Back
Top Bottom