PCTech Forums

......I have an older PC that is running a P3 on a GVC IN810ep mobo. I soon plan to upgrade to an athlon 64 processor in which I get a great deal on through an employee purchase program (BBY).

.....So when my HD finally died I thought it'd be ibest f I just a got a SATA HD so that I could soon use it on my new system and so I ended up buying a 80 GB WD SATA HD. My mobo however, doesn't support SATA so I also ended up buying a raid controller card (IO Flex PSA150).I succesfully installed the third party card, partitioned the HD and finished installing Win XP Pro. Here's when the problem begins. Once the install was finished and the computer booted.....everything posted fine but Windows did not start....the only way that i could get the computer to boot into my new installed windows is if I used the Windows CD..

....I've tried to go into the BIOS and change the devices from which the computer chooses to boot from and that didn't work......after that I was pretty much baffled to what happened.

Ill tell you it's not the Hardrive. If you installed WinXP Pro on the HD without it failing, then its most likely a configuration problem, or a corrupt file. When you first start the computer, do you see the memory, devices loaded etc??

And usually RIGHT WHEN THE COMPUTER STARTS, press Delete or F10 to enter the BIOS. I beleive you already said something about that, so I'll leave that up to you.

You can also try booting Windows in SafeMode. If you get into it from SafeMode, then its definately a driver problem.

Heres something else you can try. Disconnect all your unneccesarry boards (ie. Ethernet/DialUp card, etc..) and see if the computer boots.

If nothing else works, re-install Windows.

Im saying right now, It's NOT your HD.

I'd download drivers, or use the ones provided durring the install. (i believe you have to use a floppy, so if the device only came with a cd, you'll have to transfer them)

Durring the first bit of the installation program it'll say hit F6 (i believe) to add mass storage drivers. (or add a new device) I forget the exact terminology it uses.

it might seem the f6 did nothing, but it'll eventually bring up a window, where you need to hit "S" to install another device driver.

My guess is the generic windows drivers found the SATA stuff, but wasn't smart enough to run it in 32 bit mode.

#2 - I guess another solution MIGHT be your boot options. Many SATA controllers get put under the SCSI category at boot time. I had to set my BIOS to boot from a SCSI device in order to actually boot from that drive.

I'd try option #2 first!!!