Cant install vista.. Asus A8NE - FM.

Jimbo

Jimbo

Jimbo

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
6,796
Location
Newcastle, England
My brother is trying to install Vista x64 Ultimate, but it cant see his hard drive.

I think he needs to use a disk like the raid driver, but he doesnt have a floppy drive on his pc, or for that matter a floppy disk with the motherboard. I told him to try and use the cd, that came with the board and try load in the xp raid driver. Not sure this will work though?

Anyone else come accross this? what can be done?
 
I had the same problem and I do have a floppy drive so I loaded on the raid driver for my NF7-S motherboard. If you can find the raid driver somewhere you can put them onto a flash drive instead of a floppy.

PeterT.
 
Yeah, I suggested this, he doesnt have one but I do. So I can lend him it.

Did you load the xp driver during vista install?

Could he not just plug the sata cable into another connector on the motherboard that doesnt require sata drivers?
 
I loaded the driver during installation, from memory when it says there are no hard drives there was an icon that allowed me to browse to where the driver file was.
 
Doesnt seem to work, it wont have it from the cd. you can create a disk using the asus cd at boot but he has no floppy drive.
 
Jimbo said:
Doesnt seem to work, it wont have it from the cd. you can create a disk using the asus cd at boot but he has no floppy drive.
Click to expand...

I can confirm that loading drivers from a CD 100% work but of course the drivers have to be exactly the same as what would otherwise be found on a floppy.

Just pointing to the drivers folder on the CD is no good since the floppy drivers tend to have an extra "inf" file included to allow them to be used when installing Windows by booting from the DVD.

What you need to do is find a way of extracting the floppy disk imagine that resides on the drivers CD and then copy those files to a blank CD or USB stick. A far easier method however would be to download a fresh set of drivers that are meant for a windows Boot install but are not in an imaged format; and burn directly to CD.

I hope that makes some sense. I had to do exactly that with an older Nforce4 based motherboard when I installed Vista RC2 on it.


Anyway... Here is a link which should help you mate.

http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/vista-and-nforce4-sataraid-an-installation-guide-vt66299.html

The Asus A8N is Nforce 4 right?
 
Last edited:
Yeah that makes sense, Im now looking at the asus web site to see if there is a driver available to burn to cd.

The weird thing is it has an ide folder with xp/2000 but they dont work, as I thought they wouldnt. But there is a box ticked saying hide devices or drivers not compatible.. and when he unticks this there is an nvidia raid driver in there but it wont work. Im trying to help him over the phone so you can imaging how difficult this is.

I'll try to find the driver on the site thanks. :)
 
Can I just add he only has 1 hard drive here, he's not trying to setup raid. Just trying to get vista to see his drive.

What a palaver lol. It could only happen to him. :rolleyes:
 
Jimbo said:
Can I just add he only has 1 hard drive here, he's not trying to setup raid. Just trying to get vista to see his drive.

What a palaver lol. It could only happen to him. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Whoops I hadn't noticed that was the case sorry... Vista should be able to see a single SATA drive that is connected to the Nforce 4 SATA controller no problems.

That leads me to believe that he has the drive hooked up to the Silicon image controller instead, which is also present on the A8N. In which case all he has to do is plug the drive into the Nforce controller, disable the SI controller in the BIOS and bobs your uncle. Alternatively he could always install the Silicon image vista drivers.

For reference the Red coloured SATA ports are the Silicon image controller and the black SATA ports are the standard Nforce 4 one. Make sure he connects the hard drive to the black ones.
 
Last edited:
Aaaaaah thats what I was thinking mate, I'll give him a ring!! :)


Edit:

He's just backing up some stuff, off his pc and we shall try what you said later. Am sure its on the silcon image connector. I'll keep you updated, cheers mate. ;)
 
Last edited:
Jimbo said:
He's just backing up some stuff, off his pc and we shall try what you said later. Am sure its on the silcon image connector. I'll keep you updated, cheers mate. ;)
Click to expand...


No probs matey, lets just hope it works...

If not....

Then follow the steps in that link I gave you to get the RAID/SATA drivers on to a CD. But then rather than choosing the RAID drivers, choose the Nforce 4 SATA drivers instead.

I think Vista has built in SATA drivers for most variants of the Nforce 4 chipset but not all.
 
Would you belive after all this, he just rang me up to say the hard drive was detected.

He changed nothing and loaded in nothing, so it must be connected to the nforce controler? dont know why it wasnt getting it, but now it has. :rolleyes:

Thats my brother for you, anyway its installing fine now.

Gordy and all, thanks for the help guys. :D
 
Jimbo said:
Would you belive after all this, he just rang me up to say the hard drive was detected.

He changed nothing and loaded in nothing, so it must be connected to the nforce controler? dont know why it wasnt getting it, but now it has. :rolleyes:

Thats my brother for you, anyway its installing fine now.

Gordy and all, thanks for the help guys. :D
Click to expand...

Lol no problem mate... I'm just pleased it's sorted. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom