Westen Digital SATA2 problem

fraubungle · 2 Aug 2007 at 12:32

Hi all..

I have a problem that i just cant solve

I have just bought a new Asus Commando mother board along with 2 Western Digital Caviar SE16 400GB 4000AAKS SATA-II 16MB. I have Windows Vista Ultimate.

The problem is when i go to install vista it sees the two drives but can not use them

the error i get is

this computers hardware may not support booting to this disk. make sure that the disk is enabled in the computers bios.

When i click on the disk and then next is says:

Windows is unable to find a system volume that meets its criteria for installation.

I have checked both CDs that comes with the motherboard and cannot find the drivers, can you please explain to me what im doing wrong.

Thank you for your help in advance,

Mark.

rpstewart · 2 Aug 2007 at 12:46

How are the SATA ports configured in the BIOS? There should be the option to set them to RAID, AHCI or IDE (also seen this called Legacy, SATA or various other things). The first two will need drivers, the third shouldn't.

There's no speed disadvantage with the IDE mode so I'd just go with that option.

fraubungle · 2 Aug 2007 at 13:19

I will check this out and let you know.. thank you for the reply.

fraubungle · 2 Aug 2007 at 14:00

I have just checked my settings and it was already set to what you suggested.

SATA is the bane of my computer life.. nothing else gives me trouble except this.

rpstewart · 2 Aug 2007 at 14:19

Try this:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925481

Looks like the Vista installer can't decide which of the disks will be the bootable one. Typical MS vague error messages...

EDIT: Even the proposed solution's naff. Just disconnect one of the drives until Vista's installed then add it and partition in Disk Management as normal.

fraubungle · 2 Aug 2007 at 16:59

That last suggestion did the trick.

Thank you so much for you help. You are my new hero.

Thanks again.