JDM

Odd one this, I have an old PIII system running on a BX board. I boot from the XP CD to install windows and after running through the initial stuff it says it cannot find the 2 HDD's I have connected to the ATA66 to be found on my Abit motherboard. The drives are recognised on the highpoint ATA controller splash screen prior to booting windows.

The only way it recognises the disk is when the drives are connected via the 'normal' IDE controller. Does XP not recognise the highpoint controller on my m'board? Seems a bit odd to me.
I'm now being forced to run an old slow 6GB Samsung on the normal IDE controller as my system drive, with the 120BG 7200rpm 2MB cache disks being used as storage only.

Consequently my already crap computer is even slower than it needs to be. Anyone know a way round this or what the hell is going on with XP not recognising the drives?

john_s

iTrader: (1)

Is there not an option as XP setup runs to have it load drivers for other drive interfaces? I think you might need to feed it a driver for the highpoint controller.

John.

_Meridian_

iTrader: (1)

It sounds like you are trying to install a RAID array? If so, then you need the RAID drivers on a floppy disc. Start the install. Windows loads a whole load of files, then reboots. After the screen comes up again there will be a small message at the bottom saying "Press f6 to load third party disk drivers" or something similar. Press f6 (duh!). Follow instructions. Leave the floppy in place until Windows tells you to remove all media.


M

JDM

not RAID, my old m'board doesn't have a controller on it, just a bog standard ATA66 interface.

Will have a look at the options for other drive interfaces, thanks.

_Meridian_

iTrader: (1)

I don't know those boards: what exactly are the drives plugged into? If it's not the IDE ports then they will (AFAIK) require their own drivers at the point I said.


M

Dr Hu

I used to have a board like that - I think I installed XP with the big boot drive installed on the std IDE and nothing on highpoint - then load the proper highpoint drivers thru XP, then power off, swap the boot drive onto the highpoint ide port & reboot.

seem to remember you could set the BIOS to look for its boot drive on either IDE or Highpoint.

But as others have posted I would have thought adding a 3rd party driver at the initial install point should work also.....

n.b on mine there was no RAID - it was just extra faster HighPoint IDE ports (ATA66 instead of 33) - so in effect you had 4 ide ports - 2 fast 2 normal. before the days of mobo RAID.....

JDM

Tried your suggestions DR Hu- jobs a good 'un. If only I wasn't so tight I'd buy a new motherboard+CPU. I'm still living in the last millenium (BIOS rev 1999!)