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bottle said:
maybe you are installing the wrong drivers

nope.... I tried all possible drivers one by one.

And now, I think my floppy drive is dead. Coz I tried formatting some floppys and it said it is not able to format.

But I could format those same floppys perfectly using a USB floppy drive.

I disconnected my normal floppy drive and connected only the USB floppy drive. But in Setup, it is still saying insert disk in A:. While the USB floppy drive is B:

What do I do now ?? Is my only option to buy a new floppy drive (non-USB) ??
 
is there any data stored in your Sata HDD.
if not then connect it to your pc go to computer management
Control Panel>>>Administrative Tools>>>Computer Management

over there go to
Storage>>>Disk management
see if your SATA HDD is visible there as unpationed drive or visible there

 
Hmmm...

Well as my guess goes you should have first and foremost tried replacing the SATA Cable as 99% that has gone faulty and nothing else... You are on a A8V Dlx if i remember correctly... While installing windows you must be getting two drivers options when you will try installing the Sata drivers from the floppy(I am assuming you have already tried the make disc utility from the ASUS driver CD and have the drivers ready on the floppy)...

One of them them is the Raid driver... Avoid installing that... And your problem will be solved... This is when you have a Normal floppy drive...

What do I do now ?? Is my only option to buy a new floppy drive (non-USB) ??

The best solution which i will recommend is to make a XP boot CD which automatically detects Sata drivers for the Mobo... IIRC we discussed this issue long back on TE itself... You will have to search... You will have to make a custom OS CD... This will take time and is tricky... I think Techead was also a part of the discussion...

The second best and the easiest option is to use a IDE HDD as the primary HDD where OS has to be installed... Windows will automatically install drivers for the SATA disc once the OS is loaded on the system :)

P.S. Nikhil... Superczar is also having the same config as yours... Ask him what he uses a FDD to install the SATA drivers or he uses IDE or some other option...
 
If you want to avoid having to use a floppy drive, use an XP setup CD slip-streamed with the Via SATA drivers. Here's a simple way to go about it :

1. Get DriverPacks Base -> DriverPacks.net > DriverPacks > DriverPacks BASE

2. Get DriverPacks MassStorage (driverpacks for audio, graphics cards, LAN etc also exist if you want) -> DriverPacks.net > DriverPacks > DriverPack MassStorage

3. Extract the DriverPacks Base setup file to some folder , say 'DP'

4. Copy the 7-zipped (.7z file) DriverPacks MassStorage file to the DP\DriverPacks\ folder .

5. Insert your XP setup CD, and copy all the files from that CD to a temp folder , say C:\Temp\XP\

6. Run DPs_base.exe .

- Press the ">" button to proceed forward through the steps

- When you come to the step 'Select location of platform', select disc. Click Browse and point it to the C:\Temp\XP folder you created.

- On the next step, put a tick next to DriverPacks MassStorage (and any others you had downloaded). Also make sure the DriverPacks MassStorage text mode is ticked.

- Rest of the steps fairly self explanatory, leave them at their default options.

- No need to bother with the Optional settings. Once you're through, hit the "Slipstream" button at the bottom.

7. Once the Slipstreaming is done.. Download, Install and fire up nLite -> nLite - Deployment Tool for the bootable Unattended Windows installation - Download.

8. Proceed to next step "Locating the windows installation" -> the same C:\Temp\XP folder

9. Proceed through till you reach Task Selection. Deselect all unless you're interested in customising your installation. The *only* option you would need is "Create : Bootable ISO "

10. Next step, click Make ISO.

11. Once your ISO is ready, burn the ISO image to a CD.

P.s: Would be good if your XP is an SP2 version or you slip-stream the SP2 version prior to slip-streaming the SATA Storage drivers :)

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I would agree with Switch. Change your SATA cable if you have been frequently connecting/disconnecting your drive.

Also i find it odd that Windows XP setup isnt able to detect your drive. Your BIOS has the option to set the SATA between IDE/RAID .. when set to IDE it *should* detect it. I recently installed XP on a Gigabyte K8VM800 board (with the same Via 8237 southbridge) and had the BIOS set the SATA port to IDE mode. However i also used the above mentioned ^^ slipstreamed SATA XP setup CD, so not sure which helped! :lol:

Even weirder is the fact that after installing XP, your drive still isnt detected without drivers.
 
I would agree with Switch. Change your SATA cable if you have been frequently connecting/disconnecting your drive.

Also i find it odd that Windows XP setup isnt able to detect your drive. Your BIOS has the option to set the SATA between IDE/RAID .. when set to IDE it *should* detect it. I recently installed XP on a Gigabyte K8VM800 board (with the same Via 8237 southbridge) and had the BIOS set the SATA port to IDE mode. However i also used the above mentioned ^^ slipstreamed SATA XP setup CD, so not sure which helped

I dont use the Promise controllers where I need to choose between RAID and IDE.

I use only the VIA controller. Promise is a POS controller.
 
^ Oh. Well thats the issue. XP Setup doesnt natively detect SATA controllers/disks. What some of the Via boards have is tweaks in the BIOS to sort of make the SATA controllers emulate IDE functionality and it gets detected. Had seen this on an entry level K8VM800M board.. and that doesnt have any other Promise controller, only the Via southbridge.

Its not about the Promise controller, but your Via controller should have had similar functionality.

If not, then i guess the slip-streamed SATA driver XP setup disc would work :)
 
Yeah the promise controller should help get the SATA Disc detected in IDE mode.

However if you're not keen on putting it on the promise controller, then just slipstream the XP CD with the SATA drivers as i mentioned above. Trust me its very easy and will definitely work :)
 
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