[resolved]Sata drives shows up in BIOS but not detected during OS install

seth_turner_04 · 05-17-2007, 07:19 AM

My buddies Dell started blue screening after the XP boot screen pops up. I can see the drive when I am in the BIOS screen, but when I try to reformat or run a repair from the XP disk, it doesn't detect a hard drive.

I've ran Dell's diagnostics software and everything says the hard drive is alright. What do you think it causing XP not to recognize the drive?

Bad drive??

**linderman** · 05-17-2007, 07:32 AM

hello seth

the windows OS cant install to the sata drive because the sata controller driver is not active and loaded in the OS

you have two options

to put the sata driver from your motherboard or system driver on a floppy disk, then during the windows install you will see a prompt to PRESS F6 TO INSTALL A THIRD PARTY SCSI RAID DRIVER (press f6 and it will see your sata controller driver)

my personal preference ( I am lazy

) is to enter the bios, set the sata controller to "act" as IDE

then it will install the OS to the sata drive, after the OS is installed then you can install the motherboard chipset drivers, once the motherboard chipset drivers are installed, the sata controller then becomes active, after which you will enter the bios again and set to sata instead of IDE

post back

seth_turner_04 · 05-17-2007, 03:12 PM

I turned the option on to make it appear as an ATA drive in the bios and it recognized the drive on the XP disk now. Now the problem is that when I goto the recovery console or try to reinstall XP, it pops up with a BSOD saying BAD POOL HEADER.

Is there anything I should try doing before getting a new hard drive to try???

**linderman** · 05-17-2007, 06:19 PM

is there data on this drive that you need to save ??????

if not; then download and run killdisk or darik's boot n nuke and zero fill (erase) the drive completely

then try the OS install again

post back with your findings

seth_turner_04 · 05-19-2007, 08:34 PM

Thanks for the help Linderman. I used DBAN and zero filled the hard drive and then was able to install Windows XP and get my buddy up and going again.

**linderman** · 05-20-2007, 05:24 AM

awesome