Stupid question...

sjt269 · 27 Apr 2007 at 19:49

I'm almost embarassed to have to ask this, since I'm sure it's a ridiculously obvious question to some people (not to me, funnily enough)...

Got a replacement hard drive in from Western Digital earlier in the week and tried to install it today in my brother's PC, and I'm having some problems. The setup gets half way through, formats the drive and installs some files with no problem, then tells me the system needs to reboot and that the setup will continue after rebooting. The thing is, it doesn't. It starts over trying to install Windows. It's not set to boot from the CD, so I dunno what's wrong or how to fix it. I've installed Windows hundreds of times, and it's never done this before. I'd be willing to bet its some silly little mistake though, rather than a major issue. It's a SATA drive, if that matters, 160Gb.

Anyway, anyone got any suggestions on how to fix this? Obviously I'm having a look myself, but I've been fiddling with the PC since 2pm and I've given up for now.

sjt269 · 27 Apr 2007 at 22:24

I tried taking the CD out, and it just hangs with the message 'Boot from CD:' as though its not recognising the hard drive.

Could this be down to jumper settings, do you think? This might be better in the hard drive forum, in that case (I thought it was a software issue at first, changing my mind now though) but surely the jumpers would have something to do with it not booting from the HDD? It doesn't seem to show in the BIOS either, though the setup picks it up no problem, as does chkdsk and other such commands.

sjt269 · 28 Apr 2007 at 14:06

I'm pretty sure I didn't press anything on the keyboard, but I'll completely unplug it next time I have a go, just to be on the safe side.

Slyvester said:
Trying changing where you've plugged in the SATA drive into the motherboard. When I first got a SATA drive I made the mistake of plugging it into the Sec SATA I think it was and I had a similar problem.

Not positive it will work but it's worth a try.

I plugged it into the same place the previous SATA drive was plugged into, so this shouldn't be a problem, shoudl it? The new one is SATA II, I think, and the old one SATA I, so I dunno.

sjt269 · 28 Apr 2007 at 14:59

Yeah, I finally tracked down the jumper settings on the WD website, and I'm planning on giving it a go later on. I was going to try fiddling with the jumper settings anyway, actually.

What I don't get though is that if the mobo can't understand SATA II, how could the Windows installation get halfway done?

sjt269 · 28 Apr 2007 at 15:09

The HDD is a direct replacement from WD, so I'd imagine it would be working, plus the last hard drive that I had that didn't work didn't even get to the install stage, whereas this one does. Maybe it is the partition size after all. If I install XP on a smallish partition, I can expand it later, can't I?

sjt269 · 28 Apr 2007 at 17:01

Got nowhere with changing the jumper settings. The install still loops round and round, and the HDD doesn't seem to appear anywhere in the BIOS, though I don't know whereabout in the BIOS it would appear anyway.

sjt269 · 28 Apr 2007 at 17:27

Yeah, I was looking at that SATA driver option on my last attempt at installing. It might be worth a shot, if I can find a floppy.

sjt269 · 28 Apr 2007 at 22:20

d.chatten said:
I can see that a number of things have been tried and it seems like the only options left are, updating the bios or trying a different HDD, preferably a SATA I HDD.

I've tried a number of different jumper settings, including resetting it to SATA I (although the BIOS on his PC says its SATA II enabled) and still nothing works. I'm going to try installing new SATA drivers at some point (at the 'Press F6' bit in the install) and see if that makes any difference...if it doesn't, I'm stumped, and shall give up. Knowing him, he'll sell the drive on evilbay (his latest craze...) and buy a new one. Might not be such a bad idea, if he gets an IDE one. It would save messing about with SATA drivers. Assuming it would work.

MarcLister said:
Are you able to run Windows on your brother's PC?

This is the only hard drive in said PC. Even installing the backup one he's been using (one of my two random old 10Gb spares I happen to have lying around) at the same time as the SATA one fails to show the SATA one, and it just boots from the 10Gb one, which is a bit limiting to use long term, and he's been using for weeks, waiting for WD to send out this replacement SATA thing.

MarcLister said:
Also what motherboard is it? Deffo SATA II able? What version of XP? XP SP2?

Definitely SATA II, so says the BIOS, and I've tried his version of Windows (with SP2 on the disc) and my own version (no service packs) and they both do the same thing.

MarcLister said:
Plus, Hi from your other thread. Lets see if I can help you in here.

Heh, your help is most welcome.

sjt269 · 28 Apr 2007 at 22:46

MarcLister said:
I take it you don't have a spare IDE disk then? That would help I reckon if you could get one cheap. Perhaps a friend or a neighbour has one you can borrow?

I don't have a spare one he can use long term. Don't think any of my tech-savvy friends have any spare hard drives (already appealed to them for help) but it can't hurt to ask them.

gareth170 said:
don't u have the ide sata option in your bios?

What IDE SATA option? :confused:

I can't even find this SATA hard drive in the BIOS, incidentally, though Windows Setup finds it, as does the nVidia RAID setup (it's an nForce 4 board, hence nVidia RAID).

sjt269 · 28 Apr 2007 at 23:19

How can I use a SATA drive as an IDE? I don't understand what you're meaning. :confused:

sjt269 · 29 Apr 2007 at 14:34

Hmm. I've never heard of it either. The board is a Gigabyte K8 of some description...socket 939, nForce 4. I'll have a poke around in the BIOS and see if I can find that option.

:edit:

Doesn't look like that option is in there.

sjt269 · 29 Apr 2007 at 14:59

Right, well, I've fixed it. More or less.

I've decided to sacrafice an old, slow, spare hard drive I've got to act as the boot drive on his PC. The BIOS, I have discovered, picks up the SATA one fine now, as a secondary hard drive. No idea why, since I've not changed anything. I thought about installing/copying Windows to the SATA drive and taking the old one out again, but the computer's working now, plus I really don't have the time to install XP and all the utilities on the new one (they're already present on the spare one).

I'll wait and see what my brother says before I change anything else. If he's happy with the extra 10Gb and a slower boot drive, then I'll leave it as it is. If he would prefer it the other way, I'll fix it up for him. It's his decision, and at least the HDD is getting some use this way.

This whole thing has been pretty bizarre, but thanks A LOT to all you guys for helping me out with it, it really is appreciated in a major way. Thanks.

sjt269 · 29 Apr 2007 at 15:07

MarcLister said:
It might be worth running a chkdsk on the SATA disk if you can and see if there are any errors on there. Just something I thought of now.

Sure thing, I'll give that a go too.