Need urgent help!

hutchisoni · 26 Jan 2006 at 13:31

I have been having lots of problems with my new motherboard Sapphire PURE Advantage CrossFire Radeon Xpress 200P CrossFire.
i have it all connected but when i try to reinstall Windows XP home, it can't detect any hard drives i have been on sapphire's web site forums, there seem to be problems with the sata drive with this motherboard and it suggests to put the sata drivers from the cd which you recieve with the M/B onto a floppy and when windows asks you to install any 3rd party sata drive/raid drivers you press F6 and it will install the drivers from the floppy to run the sata HDDs.
I have done this many times with the drivers from there website and from the CD but it doesn't recognise the floppy disk has anything on it.

If someone can please help i would be very grateful.

I didn't know whether you have to format the floppy into a MS-DOS boot disk or whether just to format the floppy the normal way but in either case it doesn't work.

PLEASE SOMEONE HELP OR I AM GOING TO HAVE TO SELL THIS ONE AND BUY A 'ASUS' CROSSFIRE M/B :eek:

split · 26 Jan 2006 at 13:41

The floppy would need to be formatted so it has a file system on (most come like this these days as pre-formatted)

Err is this the driver page? (sorry I can't link it due to javascript)

PURE Innovation PI-A9RX480

ATI SATA/RAID Driver
Silicon Image SATA2/RAID Driver

Now are you using the correct sata controller?

EDIT: From another site....
A total of six SATA ports are available on the Sapphire PI-A9RX480. They are arranged in two blocks. The group of four ports on the right is 150 MB/s capable while the other group on the left can run SATA-II up to 300 MB/s.

hutchisoni · 26 Jan 2006 at 14:20

split said:
The floppy would need to be formatted so it has a file system on (most come like this these days as pre-formatted)

Err is this the driver page? (sorry I can't link it due to javascript)

PURE Innovation PI-A9RX480

ATI SATA/RAID Driver
Silicon Image SATA2/RAID Driver

Now are you using the correct sata controller?

EDIT: From another site....
A total of six SATA ports are available on the Sapphire PI-A9RX480. They are arranged in two blocks. The group of four ports on the right is 150 MB/s capable while the other group on the left can run SATA-II up to 300 MB/s.

No my motherboard is PC-A9RD480Adv http://www.sapphiretech.com/en/support/drivers_viewlist.php

im getting so fed up with putting this motherboard in finding out that it doesn't detect and then me having to put my old motherboard back in :mad:

:EDIT:
But thanks anyway

vanandjuanunited · 26 Jan 2006 at 14:34

Check that bios is set to boot from sata. Is it sata 1 or 2?

split · 26 Jan 2006 at 15:37

No my motherboard is PC-A9RD480Adv http://www.sapphiretech.com/en/supp...rs_viewlist.php

My bad, but I can tell you that you need to look for the disc as a SCSI device if using silicon image sata.

I know this is a different controller, but have a look here under "SATA Drives- Written by TonyInSeattle from the amdmb forums"

Note the Set boot up sequence in BIOS under Advanced BIOS Features to floppy, SCSI and CDROM

hutchisoni · 26 Jan 2006 at 18:03

split said:
My bad, but I can tell you that you need to look for the disc as a SCSI device if using silicon image sata.

I know this is a different controller, but have a look here under "SATA Drives- Written by TonyInSeattle from the amdmb forums"

Note the Set boot up sequence in BIOS under Advanced BIOS Features to floppy, SCSI and CDROM

Im going to give it 1 last try over the weekend and if it still doesn't work from the help from the link above, then it will be on ebay on Monday morning

Cheer for you help

split · 27 Jan 2006 at 01:32

The best way to do this (without relying on a floppy) is with nLITE.

Then have a look here at how you slipstream the sata drivers into a CD.

Your basically copying the contents of the XP CD onto a your hard disc (in a folder) and installing the silicon image drivers in the files and making a bootable CD with the drivers on.
Just make sure you follow the burning instructions exactly!
Label wont matter, but the below italic does.

Choose the radio button for IMAGE file and browse to where the XPBOOT.BIN file was downloaded to. Click the ENABLE EXPERT SETTINGS tickbox and choose NO EMULATION. Remove the NERO boot message and change NUMBER OF LOAD SECTORS from 1 to 4.

Then you have 2 bites of the cherry so to speak.