Fired up new build – XP says “no drive installed”…

[captmix]

Frustrating this is! Have set up BIOS for VIA SATA drives. Two Maxtor 120 GB drives installed, these are seen on boot up, the drives are turning.

I get a message also that “NTLDR is missing” what is that?

When XP Pro starts to load it says to push F6, then it begins to load many files including VIA as I see it pass by. I have VIA drivers on a floppy but it is not seen by XP when floppy is inserted. Then it stops and says it cannot detect a drive.

I tried to put the Board CD in and try to download more drivers but can’t get it to start. The Maxtor CD will open on boot up but not the Asus CD.

I am doing something wrong here but don’t know what.

Asus K8V SE Deluxe
AMD 64 3200+ CPU
Kingston P3200 512
ATI Radeon 2800 Pro
Enermax PSU 425W for AMD 64
Kingwin ATX case with three fans

Machinery is working just fine but cannot install XP pro

Can someone point me in the right direction?

[Statica]

What mode is your S-ATA drives set up? If they are just set up in ATA mode (nonRAID) then you should put in the appropriate drivers for XP. For example, I used the drivers here: http://www.asus.com/support/download...28.zip~zaqwedc
I just copy the following files from that zip drive as follows ...
The directory tree should be as follows for your A drive:
A:\
+--TXTSETUP.OEM
+--ULSATA
+--WinXP (folder)
+-----------ptipbm.dll
+-----------UlSata.inf
+-----------vssver.scc
+-----------ULSATA.CAT
+-----------ulsata.sys

---

The above zip files also contains what seems to make a utility to create a driver disk set called makedisk.exe, however having never used such a utility I couldnt tell you whether it works.

---

To refresh the method to supply additional drivers, during the setup of your XP (in the very beginning) you should see a prompt at the bottom to press F6 to supply 3rd party drivers, so press F6; then when prompted press S to supply an additional storage driver and follow the prompts.
HTH

[captmix]

I have VIA RAID 1 set up through BIOS. Everything seems to be there but as I mentioned when XP Pro starts setup it says push F6 for 3rd party drivers, I put in the floppy with those VIA drivers.

XP goes through a long list of files then push "start" to install XP and that's when XP says it can't find the hard drive.

Some how XP is not seeing those drivers...the floppy drive is from the old computer and that's what I used to record the VIA drivers onto a floppy. It is now (temporarily) installed in the new build.

[Spartan]

I had the same problem and spent about 3 stinking hours going in circles and pulling my hair out. Finally found the solution . The driver files were bad. I made a new floppy with the drivers and it worked on the first try. Everytime I hit F6 and loaded the drivers it seemed to load no problem and with no errors and I got to the point you are at then got stuck.

Later I had an NTLDR error but changing the boot order in BIOS fixed that.

I was installing to a Raid 0 when I had the problem and finally installed XP to just one disk so I could get in and poke around. Thats when I saw a driver error in device manager.

-Spartan

[Statica]

Are you using the VIA RAID SATA driver package? When you press F6, dont have your floppy in the drive, let Windows stop to ask you for the drivers. Also it helps to do a number of F6s at the time, rather than just press it once.

FYI: The SATA RAID driver for your mobo is here - http://www.asus.com/support/download...0d.zip~zaqwedc
Read the README.TXT included to make the driver disk, specifically for installation of OS (Section 6), its quite comprehensive and tells you how to create the driver disk.

[wjperry]

I think you have to leave the dirver diskette in the drive until after the second reading by the XP install process. Thie first read occurs after the F6 request and the sceond read occurs afer XP goes through a lot of other loading and a request to push "start". Your driver set may be good!

[captmix]

Statica...when I push F6 and then put in the floppy with the VIA drivers XP continues to load a lot of files and seems to ignore the floppy.

Question...I have tried to load XP 3 times now with the same result...cannot find HDD. Are these files being loaded again and again each time? Should I pull the battery and start CMOS all over again?

This morning I will try to leave the floppy in on the second attempt as suggested by wjperry and push F6 several times.

Also will load another floppy from my daughter's computer with the drivers from Asus site as indicted by Statica...but that version is an earlier one than what I have. As Spartan mentioned though I may have some bad drivers on that floppy.

Tom

[wjperry]

Captmix
Having read your last post, I suspect that you are not getting the floppy read at the F6 point. I had that same problem. The problem is getting the F6 key down at the right time. On my machine, the "Press F6 now" message went so d___ fats that you couldn't catch it. I to had the cannot find HDD message until I finally got the timing right. You will know it's right because the diskette will defintely be read. Hopes that helps!!!

[Spartan]

When I did mine the F6 message came pretty fast so you have to be ready. After pushing F6 it continues to load additional drivers but will come to a screen where it asked me to press "S" to specify additional drivers. Thats when I used the floppy. Mine is a different Asus mobo but thats how it worked for me.

-Spartan

[captmix]

I got as far as pushing F6 and while loading files it asked to insert disk into “A” then it started loading the VIA Driver Package.

Then…dang it all!...it stopped with the message “The file txtsetup.oem caused an unexpected error (512) at line 1742 in d:xpsp1/base/boot/setup/oemsdisk.c.

So I tried again with another floppy with the VIA drivers from Asus Site on my daughter’s computer.

Dang again! This time it stopped while loading from that floppy with almost the same..”File txtsetup.oem could not be found.”

Are these bad drivers or is it XP? I went into a Google search with this error and others have the same problem but some of the complicated solutions were beyond my geezer brain.

BTW my Full version of XP Pro has SP1.

Is there a way around this boondoggle?

This new build is important to me “WITH SATA 1” but maybe I will have to install on one HDD…but…both of my hard drives are Maxtor SATA’s. Not sure if they will work on IDE.

Tom

[skipper]

This may sound way off base, but since you are still frustrated and likely to try anything.....
A friend had numerous difficulties with his comp starting with the 'NTLDR missing message'. Went through a lot of tries with different fixes (or attempts): ultimately doing a low level format on HDD among other things. Still could not get past errors that didn't seem to quit. The second Tech tried brand new HDD. Same. Seriously considered new MB. Then the third tech took a shot at it. Found the memory bad!

Again, it could be a long shot, but if you had some other memory to try, maybe......
I found it hard to believe but...

[Statica]

Can you post the following here?
a) The directory tree of your floppy drive.
b) attach your txtsetup.oem

I am reasonably sure that your driver disk is not set up correctly. This isnt like an NTLDR missing message, its a fairly logical message that tells you that XP cannot find the driver disk as you promised it when you pressed F6. A driver disk cannot be a bunch of files just put in a floppy. It is an organized set of files in a set of directories that helps XP along. The roadmap XP uses to identify the directories and the files is contained in the txtsetup.oem file.

---

To give me the directory tree do the following:
On a working computer insert your driver disk (that you said came up with txtsetup.oem missing)
Now open a Command prompt and type the following command:
dir a: /s > c:\contents.txt

Now open up the file contents.txt from your C drive and paste it as you see
HTH

[captmix]

Statica…do you mean that opening the files on the floppy will show if there is a fault?

I have down loaded VIA SATA drivers on two different floppies with almost the same stop message.

When booting up, the VIA SATA disk array shows as being RAID 1…is it possible though that the RAID 1 array is NOT installed properly? I did boot up with the Maxtor CD and installed their drivers for RAID. Could that be a conflict with XP trying to do its thing?

There are more VIA drivers on the Asus site but are too large for a floppy. If I can just get XP loaded that would sure be a relief to be able to get ALL of the updates done!

I will have to wait and use my daughter’s computer when she gets home from work to open up the two floppies to show a directory tree. Not exactly sure what I am doing with this method!

Tom

[Statica]

Had PM-ed you.

[wjperry]

Me To, Sort of!! Wonder what's happened!

[captmix]

Well…it looks like I’m going to have to spend money for a computer shop to look at this raid/XP install.

Daughter and her husband were away for a while so I couldn’t load any drivers on a floppy. Thought I might as well take that old floppy drive out of the new build, put it back into the old ‘puter and load some more VIA drivers.

The old ‘puter didn’t see that its floppy drive was back. Drat! Went into BIOS, sure enough showed it wasn’t installed. Checked cables, okay. Did it have its own drivers? I don’t know. Took it back out and reinstalled in the new build.

Went searching on the internet for VIA drivers and found some on the VIA site.

Imagine that.

Also found a forum site called “VIAARENA” that covered ASUS boards, RAID, etc. This problem of getting the VIA drivers properly to install XP is a common issue. One moderator said to unzip the VIA drivers (too large for a floppy) and put a certain 5 files from that onto a floppy and presto!, XP will finish installing.

This morning daughter and husband were home, got those 5 files onto a floppy using their computer.

Didn’t work. XP said TXTSETUP.OEM file was missing. Dang! Went back over to daughter’s ‘puter, found that file and included it with the other 5.

By gosh this time after pressing F6 (quickly and several times) the screen said if I had other drivers push “S” and put in the disk. Did that and XP started to load drivers from the floppy.

Then a list of operating systems using VIA RAID showed. There was the VIA System on the highlighted line showing XP.

Hot Damn! Pushed “enter” and got the message “File/SATA/winxp/viasraid.sys caused an unexpected error (18) at line 2108 in d:/xpsp1/base/boot/setup/oemdisk.c

At this point I reverted to my old Marine Corps ways by saying things like, dadgum! And golly gee wizz! (Actually it wasn’t those words!)

I called a shop in Colorado Springs and explained my situation to a geek and for 80 bucks an hour they will fix it.

What is frustrating is these drivers are loaded properly onto the necessary floppy (done on two different computers and from both the VIA site and Asus) but they are not recognized by XP.

My two choices are; take it into the shop…or…put a .45 round through the new build and stay with the old and slow computer.

Nah.

Tom

[wjperry]

Tom,
Sorry for the frustation. However, before going to that shop, I would go to the nearest place and spend $15 or $20 and get a new floopy drive. I can't believe it didn't load up corretcly on the PC it came from. When it says it doesn't fine that TEXTSETUP.OEM file, is it actually on the Diskette? I'm not sure it isn't the Floopy. Since you are going to get one anyway, do it now. Sure cheaper than that geek shop!!!

[Statica]

I'd agree with wjperry here, spending $20 for a floppy is not a huge issue, or at least move a floppy drive AND cables from another computer on to this.

[glc]

Don't discount Skipper's suggestion - flaky ram can do all kinds of strange things.

[skipper]

Really, try the RAM. I know it sounds strange...... It did with my friend's computer. (They did give him the old RAM back in a plastic bag....)

[captmix]

Thanks for that RAM suggestion, guys. A local computer builder also mentioned that might be the culprit. (I was trying to get him to solve my problem).

He did give me info on a shop in the Springs that is very reasonable...NOT 80 bucks an hour like the other place!

They now have my machine and offered to get those pesky drivers installed for 20 bucks. Then they offered to go ahead and load XP too. Bet that will cost me some more though.

It did make me wonder how THEY would get those VIA drivers installed? But then they are geeks and he said that they work with RAID a lot.

As to the floppy drive, I mentioned above that those VIA drivers were loaded on 4 different floppies from two different floppy drives, so that wasn't the problem.

If this nuisance gets resolved I will submit an after action report!

And many thanks for your responses! You can bet I will be back with more questions as I move along with this new build.

Like...can I move my hard drive from the old 'puter to the new...even if it has XP Home on it? Along with all my data?

Tom

[robertsmcn]

Please excuse this long post but I'm experiencing somewhat similar problems related to this thread with a recent PC build. Last weekend I built a new rig for a friend using the following relative components:

AMD 64 3200+
MSI K8T NEO -FIS2R motherboard
160GB Seagate SATA hard drive
Windows XP Pro

When we booted up for the first time, we went to BIOS, changed the boot order to read the CD-ROM drive first, put the Windows XP CD into the CD-ROM drive, saved and restarted.

Windows XP Setup started loading its files and after a few minutes we started receving a message stating Setup could not detect a hard drive. We surfed the web and found the troubleshooting tips regarding the F6 issue.

We restarted the Setup process, hit F6 when prompted to and then put the driver floppy into the floppy drive and pressed S. This is the floppy that came with the MSI motherboard that had the SATA drivers on it.

This seemed to solve the "couldn't find hard drive" issue since the floppy drive downloaded the drivers and Setup continued without any further hitches. We were then prompted to format the hard drive and then to partition it. I did one large partition in NTFS.

After this, Windows XP loaded itself onto the hard drive and all went well. I did some minor tweaking in BIOS and then loaded several games onto the hard drive. My friend said all was going great for about two days when he booted up the third morning and got the following blue screen message:

UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME

If this is the first time you've seen this stop error
screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears
again, follow these steps:

Check to make sure any new hardware or software is
properly installed. If this is a new installation, ask
your hardware or software manufacturer for any windows
updates you might need.

If problems continue, disable or remove any newly
installed hardware or software. Disable BIOS memory
options such as caching or shadowing. If you need to
use safemode to remove or disable components, restart
your computer, press F8 to select advanced startup
options, and then select safemode.

Technical Information:
***STOP:0x000000ed (0x85e2f860,0xc0000032,0x00000000, 0x00000000)

Now, this seems to be a well-documented Windows XP problem as there are some Microsoft articles published on the issue and a Google search yielded many pages with similar results and advice. This link seems to be the main solution to the issue:

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;297185

In reading that article, I'm almost certain that my friend's problem is the damaged file system and not the UDMA controller issue.

Now, my friend tells me that he tried following the six steps from the above link to address the damaged file system problem, but that when he gets to Step 2 and presses R, he now gets a message stating that "Setup did not find any hard drives installed in your computer" and that his only options at this screen are to either exit or restart the computer.

This is where we're at now and needless to say we are at a loss. It's as though we're getting that first message all over again. Does anyone have any suggestions or advice for this new problem? Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

[captmix]

Last post on this new build saga…

I have just posted the next dad-gummed problem with this new build.

You can read it on the “Multimedia, audio, and video” section.

The shop that worked on the “VIA RAID 1 drivers on floppy” problem that prevented installation of XP, found other VIA drivers that worked and got everything installed including all the updates for XP Pro.

He gave me the floppy with the correct drivers. This guy really knew his stuff…but it cost me 60 bucks!

When I got the new build home and got it hooked up I admit I was a tad tense when pushing the “on” switch. That’s when all the lines appeared on the screen at boot up.

More swearing! And then the call to the shop with “what’s wrong?” He gave the F8 path to get XP working but dang there is a lot of frustration as I don’t know (yet) the solutions to problems such as experienced so far.

The memory works just fine as there was some suspicion in that direction. And BTW I did set up XP’s firewall before going on the internet and as soon as I did that I also installed Zone Alarm’s firewall. Also have PC-cillen anti-virus instead of Norton’s Internet Security.

The next endeavor is to try and get my data transferred from the old ‘puter. I have been reading about the transfer cables and that may be the way to go.

That is if this boot up problem can be fixed!

Tom