elementary XP ? about SATA

[Seeker47]

I've seen mention of some SP-slipstreamed XP CDs where "with SATA drivers" was listed prominently. This left me curious to know at just what point -- probably as of SP-2 (?) -- the SATA drivers were included as standard, such that one could install on most any rig without concern as to whether it had SATA or IDE hardware inside ? But I'm wondering: if the install CD is just at SP-1 level, it's gonna be a problem ?

[redwudz]

If you are using a SATA boot drive, the SATA driver needs to be added during the XP OS install most times. The install will ask for additional drivers early in the install dialog. It also wants a floppy drive with the SATA drivers on it. That may be a problem as a lot of systems don't have a floppy drive any more. I use a USB floppy and that works for the SATA drivers. I haven't noticed if XP SP2/3 fixed that, but I doubt it. It may work without a separate SATA driver install using a slipstreamed disc with the drivers added. Haven't tried that.

Vista doesn't seem to have this problem as I assume it has the drivers included on the install disc. Without the SATA drivers being installed, the boot startup may not be able to find the SATA boot drive and will tell you no boot drive exists.

It's also a good idea to disconnect all other hard drives during a OS install so it won't have any other choices. For non-boot SATA drives, the motherboard driver disc will install the SATA drivers. Some of this may depend on the motherboard used as some older Asus MBs seem to have problems using SATA boot drives.

[Seeker47]

If you are using a SATA boot drive, the SATA driver needs to be added during the XP OS install most times. The install will ask for additional drivers early in the install dialog. It also wants a floppy drive with the SATA drivers on it. That may be a problem as a lot of systems don't have a floppy drive any more. I use a USB floppy and that works for the SATA drivers. I haven't noticed if XP SP2/3 fixed that, but I doubt it. It may work without a separate SATA driver install using a slipstreamed disc with the drivers added. Haven't tried that.

Vista doesn't seem to have this problem as I assume it has the drivers included on the install disc. Without the SATA drivers being installed, the boot startup may not be able to find the SATA boot drive and will tell you no boot drive exists.

It's also a good idea to disconnect all other hard drives during a OS install so it won't have any other choices. For non-boot SATA drives, the motherboard driver disc will install the SATA drivers. Some of this may depend on the motherboard used as some older Asus MBs seem to have problems using SATA boot drives.

Thanks, redwudz. Guess I should go pick up a USB floppy drive then, just to be on the safe side. (I would hope those slipstreamed install CDs do what they claim, otherwise what's the point ?)

I used to be an Asus snob some years back, not wanting to go with anything else, but those days are gone, and none of my present plans involve their MBs.

[SingSing]

If you are using a SATA boot drive, the SATA driver needs to be added during the XP OS install most times. The install will ask for additional drivers early in the install dialog. It also wants a floppy drive with the SATA drivers on it. That may be a problem as a lot of systems don't have a floppy drive any more. I use a USB floppy and that works for the SATA drivers. I haven't noticed if XP SP2/3 fixed that, but I doubt it. It may work without a separate SATA driver install using a slipstreamed disc with the drivers added. Haven't tried that. .

I installed a new XP on sata drive without any sata driver, because the mother board bios can deal with sata + pata, in the following manner : 1. PATA + SATA, 2. Combine SATA + PATA as PATA drives.

The sata issue is even easier to deal with for user already has a PATA boot drive. Just plug in the sata drive, then goto MS disk manager to partition and format the raw sata drive, then do what ever you want with the sata drive later.

[midders]

No version of XP that I know of comes with SATA drivers, so the only option for those of us that threw away our floppy drives as soon as CDR became commonplace is to slipstream the drvers onto the XP installation CD. This is much simpler than it sounds and there is a lovely program called nLite that will do all the hard work for you.

Check it out here: http://www.nliteos.com/
If you really want to mix it up then this is a great place to start http://unattended.msfn.org/unattended.xp/view/web/1/

The SATA drivers that you need should be available from your PC manufacturers web-site or the hard-drive manufacturer if it's an after-market addition.

Sláinte

midders

[Seeker47]

No version of XP that I know of comes with SATA drivers, so the only option for those of us that threw away our floppy drives as soon as CDR became commonplace is to slipstream the drvers onto the XP installation CD. This is much simpler than it sounds and there is a lovely program called nLite that will do all the hard work for you.

Check it out here: http://www.nliteos.com/
If you really want to mix it up then this is a great place to start http://unattended.msfn.org/unattended.xp/view/web/1/

The SATA drivers that you need should be available from your PC manufacturers web-site or the hard-drive manufacturer if it's an after-market addition.

Sláinte

midders

Yes, I've heard of nLite. There are those who feel that nLite or TinyXP versions of the OS are the wave of the Win-future. Also an opportunity to jettison a lot of junk you don't want or don't need. It makes sense to me. None of this is sanctioned by MS of course, even if you've based it on a licensed pkg. that you bought. We'll see if this can still work with Vista or later.

I would very much like to get into this whole slipstreaming deal. Might it not be possible to make an install CD (or DVD) like this that incorporates not only the SATA drivers, but all the security patches up to that point, your personal desktop with all your shortcuts, your favored set of app.s with all User Preferences intact, and so forth. The point being that you could put it all back in one easy shot if your HDD suddenly took a cliff-dive and you had to replace it ? I know all about imaging, whether for individual partitions or whole HDDs, and have used it for years, but that isn't always a workable solution, particularly if some hardware changes. I'm talking about a fresh install, but not to plain vanilla OS; rather, something that finesses any driver issues and is a leap ahead to just about where you left off (or at least to some very comfortable personal baseline) skipping tons of work. I think this ought to be possible, and that it's likely some IT departments can do it routinely.

[The_Doman]

You can include almost all needed (HD and more) drivers in your XP cd with the use of the driverpacks.

http://driverpacks.net/DriverPacks/

[Skith]

There are only two reasons you would need to install drivers with an XP SP2 CD:


1: The SATA Controller on the motherboard is a RAID controller (there may have a choice between raid and non-raid drivers depending on the chipset/motherboard, you will have to check the with the manufacturer).
2: You are using an addon-on SATA controller card (PCI/PCI-E/etc).


Although... come to think of it, when SATA was now, some of the first motherboards may have required installing a driver by pushing F6 during windows install on XPSP2.

One way to check is to boot into your bios and check the boot order, make sure the CD is first, with SATA as the next choice. I advise having only the CD drive and the SATA (boot) drive connected. You will be able to tell if your bios recognizes the drive and is able to select it as a boot drive.
Have only the optical and the boot drive connected during the OS install, this avoids any problems or accidents with data loss on other drives (accidental formats/parition changes, etc).

[The_Doman]

There are only two reasons you would need to install drivers with an XP SP2 CD:


1: The SATA Controller on the motherboard is a RAID controller (there may have a choice between raid and non-raid drivers depending on the chipset/motherboard, you will have to check the with the manufacturer).
2: You are using an addon-on SATA controller card (PCI/PCI-E/etc).

Lot of modern PC's now come with native SATA controllers/hd's wich you often can't set to standard IDE mode.
So if you want to install XP(SP2/SP3) on those machines you need to integrate the SATA drivers.

There are lot's of people who will want to downgrade their new VISTA equipped machines to the older trusted XP.

With use of the DriverPacks i have created XP SP2/SP3 cd's which will install with almost all current HD controllers.

[kpa]

[
Lot of modern PC's now come with native SATA controllers/hd's wich you often can't set to standard IDE mode.
So if you want to install XP(SP2/SP3) on those machines you need to integrate the SATA drivers.

With all Intel based systems I've built recently the SATA controllers integrated into the system chipset defaulted to IDE compatibility mode (AHCI and RAID of course as options in the bios setup) so no extra drivers were needed for sata during install of windows xp or vista.

[Seeker47]

[
Lot of modern PC's now come with native SATA controllers/hd's wich you often can't set to standard IDE mode.
So if you want to install XP(SP2/SP3) on those machines you need to integrate the SATA drivers.

With all Intel based systems I've built recently the SATA controllers integrated into the system chipset defaulted to IDE compatibility mode (AHCI and RAID of course as options in the bios setup) so no extra drivers were needed for sata during install of windows xp or vista.

O.K. -- but the next couple systems I'm doing happen to be AMD.