just built a new system and cant get it to work:(

[roycey]

right so when i turn it on it says "no drives found" and then just goes to a blinking cursor. im trying to load windows on it but it doesnt recognise the drives even though they are in the bios settings....

also, if i unplug the HDD it still says no drives found, but it will boot the windows disk. i thought this could be due to jumper settings but sata drives dont need jumper settings do they?!

another thing is that the 1st time i turned it on, everything worked fine, but i didnt have a keyboard plugged in so i had to restart it and that's where the problems began,

any ideas???

 

[roycey]

Installed raid drivers-F6??? on boot i think?, that is the only time i have ever seen no drives detected was when i forgot to install them. other than that have you checked the connection to the mobo?

well it wont let me get this far!

If it worked the first time without the keyboard try clearing the CMOS and reboot.

Are the Sata channels enabled in the bios?

Also try another Sata slot on the motherboard.

im gonna try this now cheers.

 

[roycey]

How many hdd have you got and what os.This can havppe if you have a raid/hdci or something setup if you are installing xp you will need a sata controller driver via floppyThis is if you have more than 1 hdd of course.

theres only the 1 harddrive mate, im trying to install XP.

 

[roycey]

What are the specs? Components?

it's a p7p55d motherboard, with an i5 processor, 4gb ram, Samsung SpinPoint F1 320GB HDD

Quoting the original because it's more relevant to my answer...

SATA drives are usually set to Cable Select (CS) so it's not really as relevent as it used to be, now you say the Windows disc boots up when the HDD isn't connect but not otherwise? Perhaps it's because of the boot order, it's trying to boot from HDD before CD/DVD drive running into that error & not even trying the disc, so perhaps checking out & re-arranging boot order in BIOS would be 1st thing I'd check to make sure CD/DVD drive were booting before the HDD.

tried this mate, but with no luck it says no drives found even when the drive is plugged in

 

[roycey]

yes the bios is seeing the drive, but the xp install disk cannot...

 

[roycey]

all sorted, thanks for ya help guys.