weird computer problem

[Zendrik]

Im helping my friend reformat his system. Windows boots fine, there is no problem. Games/programs/internet surfing are working flawless. The problem is that when we put the Windows XP SP2 disk in the computer and boot from it, it states that there are no hard drives detected. The disk works fine in my system, his drives are seen in my system(both OS and Windows Setup). We have reseated the cords in his system. I cannot understand why the OS sees the drives but Windows Setup cannot.

 

[Salamantis]

Is the computer old? Cause the BIOS may be too old.

 

[Slippy]

What type of hard drives are they? IDE or SATA?

 

[kellyan95]

You may need a raid or sata driver if it's too old

 

[Zendrik]

I knew i forgot to mention something in post. The drive is SATA and the bios has options for the SATA drives so im pretty sure the mobo supports SATA.

edit


We are currently using my sata cables in his computer. After that, we will put my hd in his computer. I will update our findings after that.

 

[capt.fruitcake]

You need to load sata drivers during set-up by pressing f8 or something (read it's there the info) and ofcourse the driver disk can be made on another computer by looking in the driver folders that came with the sata controller or main-board.

 

[Zendrik]

But the same disk works just fine on my system that only has SATA also. Do these drivers still need to be loaded on my friends computer during the setup.

edit

Neither the cable nor HD swap worked. I think capt fruitcake is correct but we do not have a floppy drive. Is there any chance that the drivers could be booted off of a USB hard drive/thumb drive or a different cd?

edit2

We have installed XP on these exact SATA drives before and had no problem.

 

[capt.fruitcake]

Loading sata drivers during xp install is prety much must. and yeah you should be able to load from usb drive or put them on your setup disk.

 

[adgloride]

Have you tried updating to SP2 by downloading it off the internet? Or are you using a dodgy copy of windows?

 

[djgarf]

Have you tried updating to SP2 by downloading it off the internet? Or are you using a dodgy copy of windows?

i use a dodgy copy of windows but m$ thinks it's fully legit lol

 

[legendofphil]

You can't load them off anything but a floppy disk, the XP installation doesn't support it.
But you can slipstream the drivers onto the disc.
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/How-To--S...XP-installation

EDIT: You might want to try nLite to slipstream as well
http://www.nliteos.com/nlite.html