Installing Windows XP for the first time???

[shoesup]

I am building a computer for the first time. I have an ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe motherboard and an Intel 2.8 processor.

I still have a problem with an error message that I see at start-up which reads:

"No drive attached to Fast Trak Controller. The BIOS is not installed."

But the question that I want to address here is that when I installed the Win XP CD into my DVD-ROM, it took about six hours to format the drive !!! (I have a serial Seagate 120GB hard drive.) Is this normal ???

Then on XP blue screen set up, I got an error message that said:

"Set-up could not copy the file dx7vb.dll" When I skipped over that file, it gave me a laundry list of other files that it could not copy, such as: edlin.exe, esenttuyl.exe, etc.

How can I fix this problem???

What should I see when I load my licensed copy of XP into my new computer? That is, should I see blue screen all the way - like Windows 3.0 ? Or, should I see a format like Windows 98?


Please help !!!

[Statica]

Your mobo supports Serial ATA (SATA), Parallel ATA (P-ATA) and RAID on P-ATA as well as RAID on S-ATA
1) The Fast Trak message comes because your Promise RAID is enabled while you don't have any RAID drives/configurations. The optimal solution is to disable your RAID controller entirely from your BIOS.
In the BIOS go to:
Advanced menu > Onboard Promise Controller and Disable it.
In Addition, also make sure that you arent turning on RAID on your SATA drive; to do so go to the MAIN menu > IDE Configuration >
Onboard IDE Mode = Enhanced Mode
Enhanced Support on: [S-ATA]
Configure SATA as RAID: NO
This ensures that you have SATA RAID off.
2) After this stage, your hard drive should format in less than 6 hours (more like 5 min or so); try it out, if you still get errors or slow formatting then proceed
3) The errors and the time its taking to format is not at all normal. My guess is that you need to supply storage drivers for your SATA devices before XP can start installation.
The steps while time consuming are pretty easy:
a) verify that your HDD is correctly identified by your BIOS during POST.
b) Download the latest SATA device drivers from the ASUS website here: here
c) Extract the contents of the file to a temporary directory and run the makedisk.exe utility with a floppy disk
d) Once you have it ready, boot your computer with the XP CD and the floppy in the drive
e) At the very beginning of the installation, you will see a prompt to press F6 for additional storage drivers (at the bottom left of your screen). Press F6 a few times and wait for XP to finish copying some files and then come back to ask you to supply the manufacturer disk.

HTH