Installing Windows..

B

Bravestar

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 26, 2007
Messages
665
Reaction score
0
OK, ive installed/formatted windows probably 100 times in my life(im only 22 so this should turn into 500 then im dead) but something weird happened..

Im using XP Pro atm and when I booted from my windows CD everything went smooth as normal except I cant seem to "see" my current partition where XP is installed on during the installation of windows(where you have to pick a partition to install a fresh copy of windows).

I have 1x320GB SATA HDD which is partitioned into 30GB & 290GB. windows installed on the 30GB, but for some reason I cant pick it up when I try to re-install windows on that partition, any help?

Only difference between now and when i tried to install windows before is SP3, could this be the reason?
 
Last edited:
Did you do a bios update lately? If so, how is the drive set up to behave: like IDE or SATA? I know there's an AHCI (correct me. I got his abbr. wrong before) setting that makes windows not see the partition/drive.
 
Bravestar said:
I have 1x320GB SATA HDD which is partitioned into 30GB & 290GB. windows installed on the 30GB,
Click to expand...

XP setup only has native drivers for IDE drives, you need to slipstream the SATA drivers into the XP disk (using nLite) or do the 'Press F6' thing to detect the drivers at install time.
 
Deenem said:
XP setup only has native drivers for IDE drives, you need to slipstream the SATA drivers into the XP disk (using nLite) or do the 'Press F6' thing to detect the drivers at install time.
Click to expand...

XP with SP2 or later picks up SATA drives, did a clean XP install with a sata drive and installed 100% no 3rd party drivers required.

Just create a nLite'ed version of XP with SP2 or 3 :D
 
Thestealth said:
Did you do a bios update lately? If so, how is the drive set up to behave: like IDE or SATA? I know there's an AHCI (correct me. I got his abbr. wrong before) setting that makes windows not see the partition/drive.
Click to expand...

Nope no bios update of late. weird cause ive installed windows on that same partition prob 50 times and never had to install some kind of driver to see the partition where windows is installed on.

I know Vista does the same, when you install XP after Vista is installed you wont see the vista partition, or I dont :)

Will try the F6 driver thingy, if you guy never hear from me again you know ive fuuuked up somewhere :p
 
Deenem said:
XP setup only has native drivers for IDE drives, you need to slipstream the SATA drivers into the XP disk (using nLite) or do the 'Press F6' thing to detect the drivers at install time.
Click to expand...

you need to install with winxp sp2 integrated cd or an sp3 one to pick up the whole 320gb but a sp1 cd should pick at least the partitions
 
If it is a Sata drive, their should be a setting for Sata in your Bios that you must set to "compatibility" mode before XP can see the hard drive. On my Lenovo I can then install XP, run a utility, and then go back and select the advanced setting for the Sata drive.
 
does your "current partition" already have data on it? A previous installation perhaps? If so, could be a corrupt partition and your easy option is to delete all partitions and start from scratch.

If you could boot windows into recovery console run a chkdsk on the hole disk; this might yield something useful.

Alternatively, a good solid bootable linux cd is usually an indespnsable utility in troubleshooting these sorts of problems.
 
wcoetzee got it correct, points awarded.
partition size too large for original xp
 
SATA anything should work fine, the only time a driver should be necessary is if it is located on a off board controller with it's own BIOS, IE. RAID. If you enabled RAID on the motherboard you'll have the same problem, you will either need a floppy disk with the drivers on or use nLite to integrate the drivers for dos mode setup, or use a Pre-installation Environment like BartPE.

Btw. Since you're formatting, make sure to integrate the Service Pack, it's much cleaner than formatting install Windows XP SP0 and then installing the SP3 update.
 
Gnome said:
SATA anything should work fine, the only time a driver should be necessary is if it is located on a off board controller with it's own BIOS, IE. RAID. If you enabled RAID on the motherboard you'll have the same problem, you will either need a floppy disk with the drivers on or use nLite to integrate the drivers for dos mode setup, or use a Pre-installation Environment like BartPE.

Btw. Since you're formatting, make sure to integrate the Service Pack, it's much cleaner than formatting install Windows XP SP0 and then installing the SP3 update.
Click to expand...

thats good advice.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X