problem booting up with SATA drive

[enbid]

Hi all, I just bought GA-K8N9-F to replace my dead ASRock Dual SATA2. This is my first time also using SATA hard disk. I'm wondering how to make this SATA hard disk as the master drive. Inside the BIOS I already enabled everything. After I boot from CDROM to install windows system files, the system needs to be restarted right. But after that it just failed to detect the windows installation. So instead of continuing the setup, NVidia Boot Agent appeared and it just stop there. I have no clue at all about that. So, is that the problem of using SATA drive as the master drive?

Any suggestion appreciated guys.

 

[Dav0s]

you need to set SATA drive to be first boot device after cd-rom.

 

[RollerCam540]

This is a common problem that's easily fixable. Windows is installing the MBR on your IDE hard drive. If my memory serves me correctly, windows installs everything other than the MBR on your SATA drive.

If this is the problem (meaning, if you have a IDE hard drive drive installed) then all you need to do is disable any IDE devices until after the completion of the OS install.

Let me know if this helped.

 

[enbid]

This is a common problem that's easily fixable. Windows is installing the MBR on your IDE hard drive. If my memory serves me correctly, windows installs everything other than the MBR on your SATA drive.

If this is the problem (meaning, if you have a IDE hard drive drive installed) then all you need to do is disable any IDE devices until after the completion of the OS install.

Let me know if this helped.

I did disable IDE0 where my IDE hard disk is connected to. But in the process of installing windows, setup couldn't find any hard disk although my SATA drive is already connected.

One more thing, there is no option inside my bios to state SATA as a boot option, only hard disk.

 

[NickS]

I just install the MBR on my IDE drive rofl. Work's the same.

 

[RollerCam540]

I did disable IDE0 where my IDE hard disk is connected to. But in the process of installing windows, setup couldn't find any hard disk although my SATA drive is already connected.

One more thing, there is no option inside my bios to state SATA as a boot option, only hard disk.

There should be an option in BIOS that reads something like "boot other device".

When you run windows setup, do you hit f6 when prompted and subsequently install the SATA drivers when asked?

 

[NickS]

Just make it simple and leave your IDE drive plugged in. MBR on the IDE is perfectly fine, and I prefer it that way .

Seem's less of a hassle.

 

[enbid]

Well, i decided to use my old IDE hard disk to become the master drive. No problem of installing windows. Now I'm confused, I already connect the SATA drive to my mobo but I can't see the drive from my computer. I can't access the drive at all. It appears in "Safely remove hardware" section and also under Device Manager - IDE ATA/ATAPI controller - nVidia nForce 4 ADMA Controller. It's quite strange I think. All drivers are newly installed.

Any suggestion?

 

[setite]

windows xp doesnt have sufficient sata drives included generally... when you see the blue screen that loads all the modules on setup it will flash an option... press F2 or soemthing to load driver from floppy or something like that... press whatever key is for that option then stick a floppy in that has the firver for you sata.... thats what i had to do... or you can rip windows and throw the driver in and reburn... i dont know if its exactly that easy... but thats a good thing to look into after using the floppy method.. for the future

also go to windows help... look for the disk management tool... in there you should see the sata drive if you have it plugged in... select the drive and right click it i think to format it and then it should format it.. give it a letter or give you the option to letter it... then youll have to restart then you can use it... so you know though you are defeating the purpose of having sata to a degree... i had a buddy who was running his rig the way you are because the floppy we bought at frys was dead.... and once we finally got to install windows on the sata.. with no IDE... windows was much much quicker to boot and in general