Mar 26, 2006. When you attempt to install Windows XP on a computer that has a USB floppy disk drive connected, and press F6 to install mass storage drivers from a floppy, the USB floppy drive does NOT work. The Windows XP installation supports a limited number of USB floppy disk drives, which are included in the. Illustrated step by step guide on how to install a Floppy Disk Drive.

We’ve seen this question posted in our forum many times, so thought we should write an article on this problem. When users try to, they encounter the problem of not being able to find any hard disk drives installed as if they weren’t connected. The hard drive is detected with no problem in the BIOS and also on start up POST, able to boot up but the hard drive is just not being detected in Windows setup. Here is the exact error message. Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer. Make sure any hard disk drives are powered on and properly connected to your computer, and that any disk-related hardware configuration is correct. This may involve running a manufacturer-supplied diagnostic or setup program.

Setup cannot continue. To quit Setup, press F3. This problem is quite a common one and is simply due to the fact that when Windows XP was created, the SATA chipset itself and SATA hard drives weren’t available to the masses, so support for it wasn’t included in the XP setup process. As most computers within the last decade or so have some form of SATA controller, if you try to install Windows onto a SATA drive, XP won’t recognize it because the drivers aren’t present on the installation disc, so they need to be loaded manually for the drive to be picked up. Thankfully there are a few ways to get around this problem and enable Windows XP to be installed onto a SATA hard drive so you can enjoy the extra performance and other functions like hotplug/AHCI etc. Setting the BIOS Correctly The first and mos obvious method is to change the SATA Mode to IDE in the system BIOS.

Cisco Precisionhd Camera Mac Driver. Most BIOS’s for several years have included a fallback mode to enable a SATA drive to behave like an IDE drive, and therefore makes it visible to XP during setup. The problem with this setting is it comes under several different names and can be found in different sections within the BIOS. It depends entirely on the computer or motherboard’s make, model and manufacturer to know which setting you have and where it is.

If you have a manual, it’s certainly worth reading. The most obvious thing to look for is a setting which can change the SATA controller to IDE or PATA mode, with options such as AHCI ->IDE or SATA/RAID ->IDE etc. Basically any option you come across to reduce the SATA/RAID mode to IDE/PATA should be the correct one. Don’t confuse this option with a similar one which will disable the SATA controller completely. In fact, your proposal of modifying the BIOS SATA setting worked well on My Compaq nc6400.

That is after formatting my windows partition (Given that i have two OS on my laptop) i had the above mentioned problem (setup did not find hard disk. Though i could still boot to Linux without problem.)each time i tried to install the Os. So after reading your instruction i just started the machine and went into the BIOS and Disabled SATA from the device configure menu.Immediately i did this,the set up could now find the hard disk so i proceeded with the installation. Thanks very much. Had the same problem, got infected with a few virus’s Namely downloader.nsis.agent & trojan.win32.cosmu It disabled all anti-virus products, they wouldn’t run At start-up, it kept re-booting Tried to run in safe mode, last known configuration etc etc. And none worked Tried installing windows xp, then using the repair tool, but it couldn’t find the hard drive Did what you said, changed the bios – disabled sata Rebooted with the xp installation disk and hey presto, was able to repair the laptop, keep all my files (thank god) When it finished repairing, the machine also ran a chkdsk, loads of problems automatically fixed Running spybot now to remove the trojans, the future is bright Looks like my laptop is alive again, thank you sooo much for the advice, I’ve spent days trying to fix this.