new motherboard won't let windows recognize the sata drive

installed a gigabyte ga8knxp-sli, hitachi deskstar 120 gb....did everything, hit F6, put in the floppy, loaded the drivers, says windows doesn't see a mass storage device. then did it without loading the floppy, and lo and behold, there is c drive, however when i start loading windows, it goes into a loop, loads files, restarts and starts all over again. asks me if i want to reformat c:...(so the drive is there), when i start windows setup it says windows is allready loaded, do i want 2OS....this is nuts, have no ideawhere to plut the sata cord in, ihave 8 sata pluts on the mobo...4 yellow, 4 red......ready for sipuku....lol

 

Hard times eh bklyn...
The technical solution to your problem is sure to be found within your BIOS.
There is a very specific configuration req'd to enable SATA drive as first boot device.
My ABit supposedly supports booting from SATA, but it functioned not ;-(
There has just recently been an ABit BIOS update to address this issue, and allow my SATA boot to function properly.
I, however, have a nice WD 120GB (8MB) ATA drive from which to boot, so I have sidestepped the problem...
Do yourself a favour, buy a 40GB ATA drive ($50 - $60 bucks) format it FAT32 and use it to start your rig.
There are many operations like video transcoding for example, that work better from one HD to another, and so it is good to have at least 2 HDs.
Plus, with 2 HDs each on their own controller, you can put your OS on the 120GB and your Windows pagefile ('swapfile') on the 40GB disk.
This will allow improved performance.
The first drive on the primary controller will always be C:
Because it contains the Boot files, Windows will call it the System partition.
The SATA drive can contain the OS system files - and Windows will then call it the Boot partition!
Don't ask me - ask Bill, I'm not makin' this stuff up
Hope this helps,
Regards

 

I just ordered the Gigabyte GA-K8NS and it will be at my place tomorrow, but I was wanting to do a SATA setup and boot from my HD, so what you are saying is that I wont be able to boot from my Serial ATA HD? and do I need to flash the bios to use my Serial Ports also does having serial ports on your motherboard mean u can use 4 ide devices plus use ur serial ports for additional devices?

 

thanx for the info ags...but....i allready bought this 120 gb hitacha sata...and i have an iomega external 120 gb...soo...don't really wanna get another, i disabled raid in bios, not it won't even boot from the cd.....where is that sipuku knife?...by the way, with one internal drive...(the external is usb and not hooked up yet) shouldn't raid be disabled?
can you hook up an sata to an sata 2 port?....man..this is confusing....and im not gonna get a dell..gonna work this out one way or another.....got a sharpener?....lol

 

by the way..configured bios to put the hd as the 1st boot, and it wouldn't boot from the hd...kept asking on the monitor for cd boot

 

Hi guy's new to forum, although read and used many guide's, i have an Asus board and for sata you need to change your bios setting to scsi to boot from sata drive, hope this helps.

 

Your SATA controllers probably work just fine without having to flash your BIOS; it's just that some mobo's had minor issues with booting using a SATA system partition.
This is a PC hardware problem not involving the OS yet - you first have to get the SATA configured in BIOS as primary boot device.
My BIOS has the usual 1st/2nd/3rd/other choices for selecting boot order, but there is a sub-menu to choose between SCSI and SATA as primary 'other' device.
So I have Floppy=1st/CD-ROM=2nd/Other device=3rd, (with the SATA being the primary Other) and RAID disabled.
Now I'm ready for the OS, but dead without WinXP SATA driver (F6).
Once WinXP recognises the new SATA, it might even call it C:\ but it's not gonna boot from it, it will still ask for the bootable CD-ROM until the HD has OS installed.
My problem was that WinXP would mess up on first reboot, during install. It would start the install OK on the SATA, but couldn't detect it on restart, it was BS...
So then I noticed there was a new BIOS update for my mobo, and this 'known issue' was listed as being fixed - but I haven't tried it out yet.
Lots of people gonna be running SATA-only now & in future more and more, so you know, they better make it work!
Your problems sounded like mine were, and so I wanted to tell you what I knew
L8R

 

thanx, i finally goteverything working, installed xp,now the computer shuts off randomly. turn it on,,,in 5 seconds it shuts off...does this constantly, i might get to the desktop in xp (installed xp from gateway's cd from another computer in my home) get to the desktop, and it shuts off completely. i went into bios, for some dumb reason i enabled a usb keyboard, my keyboard isn't usb, now the keyboard won't work, and i can't get into bios to change it....plus i changed the power supply to seeif that wasit, and it still shuts off...any thoughts?

 

Sounds like a cooling problem with your CPU. Did you put thermal paste on the CPU and is the Heat Sink properly mounted. To find out try going into the BIOS and see if there are some automatic shutdown after a certain temp if so disable it and see if Windows runs stable. If that fixes the problem then its a heat problem and u need to re enable the option and fix your CPU. Also it could be a bad install of Windows XP, because I think you mentioned you used a version of it that was on a Gateway disc, it could have motherboard drivers on it for the Gateway system and it could be crashing your system. Let me know what happens

 

Also your keyboard should work to access your bios if its a PS2. PS2 Keyboards are always able to access the bios. But I would get a USB keyboard then and see if it works, but from my experience PS2 boards are always able to access the bios no matter what its set on.

 

ok...got your brains in gear.....the shut down happened before i installed xp...would just shut off...i went into bios then, and cpu temp was 41 C.
and the head sink was cool to the touch. it appears to be solid in there. i called gigabyte (mobo manuf)..he said to take out the mobo from the case, and run everything on a piece of cardboard and if it doesn't shut off sporadically, then there is a short problem with the mobo hitting the case. he said to install sp2..that would cover the usb and keyboard problems, by the way, the keyboard worked fine before xp was installed, and i called gateway, they said the disk is from microsoft, they just put their name on it, could there be something on the disk that will make it only work in a gateway machine, do i have to buy an actual xp disk, if i do.,..then i'm getting pro
good,,,,no?...come one...lets hear it ...lol

 

by the way, ..... sometimes it boots up to xp, and i can move around...u know...go to my computer etc,,,,then it goes into the shut down process all by itself...

 

go to bios, put everything at default.....?
and they how do i go to safe mode

 

so..in your opinion i should do that first b4 i take the mobo out of the case and see it that works...(possibly shorting or touching the case)

 

i really appreciate all the help