Trying to reinstall Windows

Greenlizard0 · 1 Jul 2007 at 14:40

I am trying to reinstall windows.

I put my windows CD in and reboot (after changing the boot order to CD-ROM), and I seem to keep getting the "Invalid system disk - etc" error message. I don't know why this is.

The last time I was able to reformat and install windows normally it was with my PATA drives, now my optical drives are both Samsung SATA ones. <-Is this the reason why i'm unable to use them to boot up and therefore install windows?

footman · 2 Jul 2007 at 11:31

Dont you need to extract the sata drivers from your motherboard cd onto a floppy?

PsiFox · 2 Jul 2007 at 12:07

I'm assuming this is XP?

The easiest way is to put in a pata optical, load XP plus sata drivers and then switch to SATA.

However some boards do not like working with sata optical drives

Others have found

The problem is the XP distribution, even SP2 does not have the correct chipset drivers and XP cannot configure correctly. The solution is to go to the chipset Vendor site and obtain the correct low level board drivers.

bledd · 2 Jul 2007 at 12:33

this is why i'm still using an ide dvdrw, until each motherboard manufacturer has perfected their legacy support i'm steering well clear of SATA DVD

Greenlizard0 · 3 Jul 2007 at 19:48

Sorry for not answering your questions and updating;

I changed the CD to a different bay, and it worked, for some reason at boot time only one is responsive, I'm not sure why this is. But I have reinstalled windows fine and it's working lovely (ish), see my other threads for my USB problems etc...