Installing Windows XP

[Kastuvas]

Im trying to install Windows XP on a computer with a SATA hardrive however it doesn't have floppy disk drive, now the question is. Is there any way to install scsi drivers without the floppy disk, or will I need to dig out a floppy disk from somewhere :/

Thank you for your advice.

[Technoid]

take a look at this page : http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?...173&hl=Si3112r

or this: http://unattended.msfn.org/unattended.xp/

[Kastuvas]

Thanks for the info Technoid, looked too complicated just got an old floppy disk drive

[Technoid]

Still have an floppy drive just for that

[Nowhere]

BTW, are there any SATA controllers (especially of the flavours used on PCI cards) which work "out of the box"? I'm mostly interested in situation on Win2k3, not XP SP2...

[Gurm]

Some SATA controllers enumerate in the BIOS and hence ... work. I'm really surprised at how few do, truth be known.

nForce2 used Silicon Image, which didn't. nForce3 uses nVidia, which do. I'm sure others do as well.

[VJ]

A Dell server we have (since almost 2 years now!) has an interesting bios feature. With it, you can set the front USB port to behave as a floppy drive when a storage device is inserted. Prior to an installation, it suffices to do so, and just plug in a USB stick with the drivers. Any call to A: is diverted to this USB memory.

Great, and it doesn't need a floppy. But it makes me wonder why this particular server still came with a floppy in its default configuration.

This feature should be standard on all mainboards.


Jörg

[Kastuvas]

Had so much hassle with that sata installation. Went home to get a floppy drive and forgot the cable, had to go back again. Bought a floppy disk on the way which as it happens got corrupt, had to go back to the shop to get another one all in a pissi*** rain.

Well only have myself to blame for the first part

[Maggi]

A Dell server we have (since almost 2 years now!) has an interesting bios feature. With it, you can set the front USB port to behave as a floppy drive when a storage device is inserted. Prior to an installation, it suffices to do so, and just plug in a USB stick with the drivers. Any call to A: is diverted to this USB memory.

Great, and it doesn't need a floppy. But it makes me wonder why this particular server still came with a floppy in its default configuration.

This feature should be standard on all mainboards.


Jörg

Awesome feature indeed ...

Since we don't have that option, we took the route of actually buying an USB floppy, only to find out that WinXP doesn't support it fully

I had hooked up the USB floppy, booted from XP's installation CD and hit F6 to add the drivers for a SATA RAID controller.

the installation asked me to
"please insert driver disk into drive a:"
did that, hit enter and the drivers got loaded

I declined to add further drivers and setup a partition on the RAID to install WinXP

formatting went well and installation proceeded

until it came to copying the driver files onto HDD
"please insert driver disk into drive a:"
to my surprise, it was still inserted
took it out, put it back in, hit enter to load the driver ...
"please insert driver disk into drive a:"
unplugged the USB floppy drive, reconnected it and hit enter
"please insert driver disk into drive a:"

no matter what I tried that mofo kept telling me to
"please insert driver disk into drive a:"

not that it hadn't loaded those drivers and used them already for installing onto the HDDs that were connected to that controller ...

Ever since, we keep an ordinary floppy drive just for the purpose of adding drivers to support the needed HDD controllers that are not included into WinXP SP2

I also tried to slip stream those drivers into the installation CD, but that failed as well, most likely due to the drivers not being MSWHQL certified ...

Cheers,
Maggi

[VJ]

Since we don't have that option, we took the route of actually buying an USB floppy, only to find out that WinXP doesn't support it fully

Wouldn't this be solved by enabling "legacy USB support" and "USB SCSI subclass devices support" in the BIOS?

Or you should first install drivers for the USB floppy... Aren't recursive problems fun?

Jörg

[DJ]

Most of the time (maybe all the time) its not really necessary to load any drivers. Just disable the SATA Raid in the bios and it works just like that. Its really the RAID controller that is causing the installation problems.

DJ

[Maggi]

Wouldn't this be solved by enabling "legacy USB support" and "USB SCSI subclass devices support" in the BIOS?

Or you should first install drivers for the USB floppy... Aren't recursive problems fun?

Jörg

I'm not 100% certain, but I think I had to use those options anyways for making the USB floppy accessible for the XP installation in first place


what beats me is that fact that the installer used the floppy and loaded the drivers once at the very beginning, let me use those drivers for setting up the install partition but then asks for exactyl those drivers again for copying them onto harddisk and blatantly fails to access the USB floppy for a 2nd time

Sometimes I just hate MS for such stunts.

Thanx for the idea though.
Maggi

[DJ]

Just to be clear on what I posted earlier, XP will install fine with SATA drives as long as the RAID controller is disabled. I have done it many times myself. Leave the SATA controller enabled in the bios and disable RAID.

DJ

[Nowhere]

Some SATA controllers enumerate in the BIOS and hence ... work. I'm really surprised at how few do, truth be known.

nForce2 used Silicon Image, which didn't. nForce3 uses nVidia, which do. I'm sure others do as well.

Thinking about getting new HDD (one 80GB died, so only 80GB left...), but it would be definatelly SATA (could be used in potentiall new machine). But the only SATA PCI cards are Via (not installing any drivers from them...) or...Silicon Image :/