I have a strange problem involving a SATA drive and an XP install CD.
I'm hoping someone can help me understand what's going on.

The machine in question is one I built myself. It's got an Abit IC7-G
Max2 motherboard, a Maxtor 160GB SATA drive, and two Maxtor 40GB IDE
drives.

IDE channel 1 has a DVD writer and a DVD reader on it.
IDE channel 2 has the two 40GB Maxtors
The SATA Maxtor is treated by the mobo as the only (and therefore
primary) drive on IDE channel 3.

The system is configured to try booting from the floppy drive first, the
CD drive second, and the hard drive third. The BIOS configuration
allows me to pick the order of the hard drives for booting purposes.

If I put the SATA drive as the first drive in the list, I am unable to
load the Windows XP installer from CD. I get as far as "Setup is
inspecting your computer's hardware configuration", and then the screen
goes black and the drive activity light comes on and never goes off.

If I put the SATA drive as the second or third drive in the list, the XP
CD boots just fine.

If I completely remove the two IDE drives (leaving only the SATA), the
CD will not load (same as above).

I've found evidence in other newsgroups that others have experienced a
similar problem in trying to load the XP install CD on a system with
only SATA drives, or with a SATA drive as the primary boot drive.

Microsoft, on the other hand, insists that it's a hardware problem and
refuses to address it any further.

Can anyone provide further information on this? Is it a common problem?
Is there a fix available?

Thanks for any help.

-- Chris

(remove the first "i" to reply)

Is this XP with SP2?

This is just a hunch... go and download the floppy boot disk set and try
booting from the floppies (6 floppies are needed)...


"R. Christian Call" <rccall@optionline.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.1e1bac707a989cb6989682@msnews.microsoft.c om...
>I have a strange problem involving a SATA drive and an XP install CD.
> I'm hoping someone can help me understand what's going on.
>
> The machine in question is one I built myself. It's got an Abit IC7-G
> Max2 motherboard, a Maxtor 160GB SATA drive, and two Maxtor 40GB IDE
> drives.
>
> IDE channel 1 has a DVD writer and a DVD reader on it.
> IDE channel 2 has the two 40GB Maxtors
> The SATA Maxtor is treated by the mobo as the only (and therefore
> primary) drive on IDE channel 3.
>
> The system is configured to try booting from the floppy drive first, the
> CD drive second, and the hard drive third. The BIOS configuration
> allows me to pick the order of the hard drives for booting purposes.
>
> If I put the SATA drive as the first drive in the list, I am unable to
> load the Windows XP installer from CD. I get as far as "Setup is
> inspecting your computer's hardware configuration", and then the screen
> goes black and the drive activity light comes on and never goes off.
>
> If I put the SATA drive as the second or third drive in the list, the XP
> CD boots just fine.
>
> If I completely remove the two IDE drives (leaving only the SATA), the
> CD will not load (same as above).
>
> I've found evidence in other newsgroups that others have experienced a
> similar problem in trying to load the XP install CD on a system with
> only SATA drives, or with a SATA drive as the primary boot drive.
>
> Microsoft, on the other hand, insists that it's a hardware problem and
> refuses to address it any further.
>
> Can anyone provide further information on this? Is it a common problem?
> Is there a fix available?
>
> Thanks for any help.
>
> -- Chris
>
> (remove the first "i" to reply)