[dapa2350]

I am a computer novice and decided to explore by building my own computer. I have put it together and am able to get into bios. BIOS sees my sata hard drive. When I tried to instal Vista it was unable to write to sata hard drive.
I believe the message is that there is no sata driver. I have tried looking through bios to see if there is a sata driver that I can turn on. Some of the reading I have done seems to say that I can do it through CMOS. I am having no luck in understanding what I need to do to be able to get the hard drive that is seen in bios to work. (I have 2 and unpluged one until I can get vista installed and working)
System is a 902 Antec Case, motherboard gigagyte GA-MA-790XT-UD4P, CPU is AMD phenom II Quad 955 BE, with DDR3 memory.
I am able to get part way through instalation of vista so I know that the DVD player works but I can not get the motherboard disc to open or run. I went to the gigabyte web site and copied the chip set and sata drivers, but I don't know how or even if I can acesses it in the USB port...I have tried.
Where do I go from here?

[Advertisements]

Almost all Windows install discs should have SATA drivers built in. What brand is your hard drive?

If you're hard drive is new, it may be dead on arrival.

[Numb Remxed]

Almost all Windows install discs should have SATA drivers built in. What brand is your hard drive?

If you're hard drive is new, it may be dead on arrival.

[rshaffer61]

Check in the bios and make sure the controller for the Sata drive is not set for Raid
This can cause the issue you are having.

[dapa2350]

My hard drives are both new OEM WD1001FALS 1TB. Only one is plugged into the SATA at this time. I can feel it spin up but, will switch to the nonconnected to see if the first was DOA.
Last night In BIOS I switched from the default of IDE/SATA to see if that would make a difference it didn't. The RAID choice has not been selected. When I get home I'll switch it back the the default IDE/SATA and see if there is a driver that can be selected when I choose it as the default. I'll go throught the rest of BIOS and make sure I haven't over looked another RAID setting.
Thanks for the suggestions. I'll let you know what happens.
dapa2350

[rshaffer61]

When I built my wife her new system I put a brand new WD 259 gig SATA drive in it.
No problem at all loading XP on it.
Some MOBO's will not identify the drive correctly or the controller will be set for Raid or SCSI in the bios.

[dapa2350]

Almost all Windows install discs should have SATA drivers built in. What brand is your hard drive?

If you're hard drive is new, it may be dead on arrival.

[rshaffer61]

You can try and slave the drive in question to another drive in the system you are typing on.
Partition it and format it using NTFS
Then put it back into the system you are trying to install it in and see if Vista will now load on it.
Is the Vista a Genuine Microsoft disk or a burned copy?
Make sure the boot sequence in the bios is set to boot to the cdrom first. Check that by doing the following...


To change Boot Sequence in your BIOS

Reboot the system and at the first post screen (where it is counting up memory) start tapping the DEL button
This will enter you into the Bios\Cmos area.
Find the Advanced area and click Enter
Look for Boot Sequence or Boot Options and highlight that click Enter
Now highlight the first drive and follow the directions on the bottom of the screen on how to modify it and change it to CDrom.
Change the second drive to the C or Main Drive
Once that is done then click F10 to Save and Exit
You will prompted to enter Y to verify Save and Exit. Click Y and the system will now reboot with the new settings.

Hopefully you have already put the Vista cd in the drive before all this. If everything is setup correctly you will get a black screen with the following message in the upper left corner:
"Push Any Key To Boot To Cd". When you see this then push any key and the cd will take over.

[rshaffer61]

You will have to manually install the Sata\Raid drivers for your MOBO to make everything work correctly.

To do that follow the next steps:

Clean Install

Turn your PC On

As the PC starts quickly insert the Windows Vista DVD into the DVD drive

If all goes well a black screen should appear with the legend 'Press any key to boot from CD or DVD.' If you miss this screen just reboot your machine again

At the 'Press any key to boot from CD or DVD' screen Press Enter or any other key to start the Windows Installation

Windows will now start loading files into memory

After files have been loaded the screen will change to a black screen with a green progress bar. Beneath the progress bar are the Microsoft copyright details

After a short while the language selection screen will appear. Select the desired language, and then click the Next button

The Install screen will now appear

On the Install screen Press the Install Now button

At the next screen Insert your Windows Product Code number and press Enter

Next you need to accept the EULA (End User Licence Agreement). Place a Tick in the Accept box and then Click the Next button

At the next screen you will need to Select your Installation type. As you are performing Clean install only the Custom option will be available for selection

The next screen asks 'Where do you want to install Windows'

On this screen, bottom left hand corner, you will see an option marked Load Drivers. Click on this option

To install the device driver(s) you will need to insert the installation media that came with the RAID/SATA drives and which contains the relevant driver(s). This media can be floppy disk, CD/DVD or USB flash drive. Once you have inserted the media into the relevant drive, Click the OK button

The system will now search the media for the relevant driver(s)

After the search has been completed the driver(s) will appear in the 'Select the driver to be installed' Window

Select the relevant driver and then click Next

The driver will now be installed

If more than one driver requires to be installed, repeat steps 17 to 19 until the necessary drivers have been installed

After all drivers have been installed, click the Next button to continue installing Windows Vista.

[dapa2350]

I finally got the system up and running last night. What fooled me was the fact that I could tell the hard drive was powered and spinning up. Also it was correctely being identified in bios. The message in vista was that there was no driver installed and it could not see the hard drive (I think it was looking for the formated area to instal in.) When vista would not install intially I had 2 identical sata hard drives plugged in. To simplify I disconnected one of the drives (the good one naturally.) Since the defective drive was spinning up as it should and it was being correctly identified by model# in bios, I thought it was good to go. After going through bios options for the hundreth time and vista not being able to see the downloaded sata driver on either my usb thumb drive or CD, I tried disconnecting the first drive and reconnected the second drive. First try and vista loaded without a hitch. With my system running I went back and tried to format the bad drive. It would cycle through like it was formating but would hang up at the end cycling for about an extra 15 minutes before self interupting and not completing the format. I tried it several times with the same results. So it was not exactly Dead On Arrivial but certainly DEFECTIVE ON ARRIVIAL. Got the RMA # and returned that drive this evening.
Numb Remxed was on the right track thinking it was a bad hard drive.
It was an interesting introduction to bios.
Thanks rshaffer61 for all the help with bios and vista procedures.
Thanks to all for the help.
dapa

Edited by dapa2350, 05 August 2009 - 10:50 PM.

[rshaffer61]

Congratulations. for a successful resolution for your issue. I am happy everything has been worked out for you. With that being said I am happy to say:


You are very welcome. I'm glad we could help and please let us know how everything works out for you.
If there is anything else we can do to help please feel free to ask. I appreciate that you allowed me to assist you with your issue and for your patience. Thank you for choosing GeeksToGo for help.
This issue now appears to be resolved.


If other members are reading this and have a similar problem please begin a New Topic and someone will assist you as soon as possible