Installation help please!

throdgrain · 29 Dec 2006 at 10:51

Ive just bought a Samsung 160gig 8mb cache SATA HDD , becuase my old IDE one is dying.
I went through all the aggro of backing everything up, then installed the new drive and removed the old. Booted from disc as Ive done 100 times (or something

) and installed all the peliminary windows stuff. The PC then reboots as normal, but instead of going to the next stage of windows installation it simply says operating system cannot be found. In the end I got fed up, reinstalled my IDE drive and decided to use the SATA for more disc space.
This worked fine, the PC can see the SATA drive, I formatted it via control panel and thought oh well there you go

Then this morning I get up , turn on my PC and get the same error loading operating system error. I think the IDE has finally died, and so spend some time ******* about with it, to no avail.
Eventually I try disconnecting the SATA, and suddenly all is well again!
So, my question is this, has the SATA got a fault? Or is it something else? Even when it wont load, it still registers in BIOS by the way.
Thanks for any help !

throdgrain · 29 Dec 2006 at 11:54

No one has an idea ?

randeesha · 29 Dec 2006 at 18:01

throdgrain said:
operating system cannot be found.

how's the boot sequence? also, did you remove cdrom and floppy from respective drives? is the HD correctly detected in bios?
if it's not this we can try stg else

throdgrain · 30 Dec 2006 at 13:36

OK, the reason for the second error was that I removed the IDE drive then refitted it. My PC then thought the SATA was the main drive, which of course didnt have XP on it. Disconnect, connect, sorted.
As far as the first error goes, ie that if installed on its own the SATA drive wont restart from hard drive after the first part of windows XP installation, well Im still stumped.
After refitting it as a second drive I can see that the SATA has had the first bits of XP installed on it, so I know its working. Ive set in bios so that there is no boot from disc option, when I do that it just goes straight to the error no OS found thing.
My mate reckons it could be becuase I have a very old (circa 2001) copy of XP, which doesnt like large HDD's, but this is only 160gb, and I installed it on a 120 gb hdd a while back no worries. I could try it, but dont fancy spending another £90 for the gamble.

randeesha · 30 Dec 2006 at 14:02

throdgrain said:
After refitting it as a second drive

check in bios then, boot sequence: seek drive1 first instead of drive0
second thought: how are the jumpers on both drives?
third thought: where on the cable did you fit the 2nd drive?

try these in the order

throdgrain · 31 Dec 2006 at 17:02

With the SATA only installed it was set to SATA1. There doesnt seem to be a SATA0.