how to re-anable my sata icon in win xp sp3 (sata drives not visible in DM)

[deejay.2001]

hi
i have win xp sp3, mobo asus m2n-sli deluxe and my sata drives dissapeared from disk management
drive is loading in winxp probably under ide not sata....
what i need to do to see sata icon in right corner again and make it like it was before please?

do i need to install some sata driver? or reinstal winxp....i dont want to loose data...

thanks for answer

[aedipuss]

not quite sure what you mean. all my drives are sata, but nothing in disk management says "sata" nor is there an icon.

[deejay.2001]

simply sata driver is not installed in my system anymore and need to reinstall...do not know how!

[aedipuss]

if the drive is working the driver is installed. if not what is the sata controller? built on the motherboard? add-in card? you need to re-install it's driver. if it's the on-board ones re-install the nforce drivers. if that doesn't work the device is dead. time for a new m.b.

[DB83]

So you do not see ANY Sata drives either under Disk Management or Windows Explorer ?

Simply updating XP to sp3 would not lose any previously installed driver. But if a driver has to be reinstalled it is usually done in one of two ways.

1. The driver is installed directly from the Mainboard CD
2. The driver is installed via the CD on to a floppy disk and installed at system start up with the disk in the drive and the bios set to boot from the floppy (once the driver is installed you then reset the bios to boot from the HDD)

[deejay.2001]

1. The driver is installed directly from the Mainboard CD
2. The driver is installed via the CD on to a floppy disk and installed at system start up with the disk in the drive and the bios set to boot from the floppy (once the driver is installed you then reset the bios to boot from the HDD)

i have made floppy with sata drivers also i have loaded sata drivers by booting widows xp from disc and it came to point to
1. continue win xp
2. R recovery console

well if i choose first it will reinstall my xp? i dont want reinstall my xp ,i just need sata driver so my HDDs are visible in disk management

so i have rebooted after loading sata drives and still HDDs not visible in disk management
any help please?

[aedipuss]

check the data and power cables at both ends, they fall off easily if they don't have metal retention clips.

[DB83]

It may also help if you would tell us of the system you had BEFORE you installed Windows XP sp3.

As my friend stated, you will not normally see a 'sata' icon. So do you have some sata controller card inside the PC. One that may need a specific driver that came with the card ?