SATA drives wont detect harddrive or cd rom HELPPP PLEASE

[idealproductz]

Ok guys, I have a HP a6720y I bought it from a guy and he took the harddrive out, so I got a western digital 1tb harddrive which used to be external. got it all hooked it up and it wont detect my hard drive or dvd rom, i went to bios and nothing is there, i hooked up a external dvd rom by usb and it detected that and i tried to run windows xp (win 7 wouldnt boot) there is no operating system on the hard drive so i get all through and xp says it cant install because it cant find the hdd. i then took my external apart and put the 1tb in there and on xp install it sees its there but wont install. I think i need my sata drivers for my mothe rboard which is a pegatron m2n78-la i think made by asus. but how can i install the drivers for my mother board when i dont have a operating system installed? PLEASE HELP

[Old Rich]

Installing XP on a SATA drive requires an additional step:

XP Help And Support: 108. How Do I Install Windows XP On A SATA Hard Drive

However, Most newer BIOS allow an Alternate method for SATA . . Go into the bios and check the "Sata Operation" setting,

change it to "Raid Autodetect/ATA if it is not already. Now try to install XP ( could be IDE Mode, Compatibility Mode or Legacy Mode - different BIOS use different terms )

some will say IDE instead of ATA)

If there are no such settings you'll need to slipstream the sata drivers on the XP CD, follow the instructions in this guide :

How To Slipstream SATA Drivers Into XP CD

or

Resolving "Setup did not find any hard disk drives" during Windows XP Installation - How-To Geek

[idealproductz]

ok ill try that, thank you rich

my computer doesnt have a floppy so can i put it on a usb stick and will that work after i press f6 on xp installation and i was on hp website but i cant find the sata drivers for my computer would you know where to find em.

[Old Rich]

If HP does not have them, I would try the IDE/SATA setting in BIOS. They will not install from a flash drive

[idealproductz]

ok thanks rich, new problem, I finally got the windows 7 64 bit dvd to work and it goes right through and everything but same thing happens it asks me for drivers mass storage. im guessing its my SATA drivers, I still dont understand how to install them and what ones to install for my motherboard. it allows me to use floppy, cd or flash i would be using flash but if someone can help me get my sata drives work so it can detect my hardrrive would be good. i dont have any operatin system installed so i did try to download some .exe. file from HP site but its a application and i can only open it on my lap top. anyways if someone could please help me and let me know what files i need and where would be great. thank you guys

[Tyree]

Have you set SATA to IDE in the Bios?

[idealproductz]

hey yes i tried it on ide and its the same thing, i tried it on ahci and raid also. nothing connected tot he sata ports show up in bios, if its connected to usb it will show up, i hooked the hd to a external to try and get a os on it and then do the drivers but it wont install through a usb it says. any thing els ei should try?

[Old Rich]

Did you install the chipset drivers?

[idealproductz]

hey, no i didnt install the chipset drivers,im not really sure how to do that, what are they and how would i do that?

[Old Rich]

They should be on the HP support site

[idealproductz]

yeah i dowloadeded those updates but they are .exe and i have no way of installing them since i dont have a operating system

[idealproductz]

I guess a new question would be how can i, if possible, install a bios update (without a flopy) and with no OS

[Old Rich]

Windows 7 has SATA drivers native ot the operating system, so those are not the problem. What happens if you cancel to bypass the request for the mass storage device?