Vista+Sata: Now Possible

By Zucker2k
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Zucker2k

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All Credits go to Chris123NT of Winbeta.

Windows Vista On SATA: Can't be done? Think Again!

Boot into setup from the Vista DVD.

Proceed through the various setup screens as usual until you get to the screen with the various harddrives and the "Load Driver" button (i.e., Where

do you want to install Windows?).

At this screen, press Shift+F10 to open a command prompt.

You'll need to use the command prompt to find 2 things:

The drive letter of the DVD drive containing the Vista DVD

The path to the location of your 3rd-party storage driver(s) on whatever media they're located on.

The easiest way to find these paths is to open Notepad (notepad.exe) at the commandline, go to File | Open, then click Computer on the dialog's breadcrumb bar to get a view of all your (currently available) drives.

Alternatively, you can do a "dir" on various drive letters until you get what you're looking for.

After you have both paths, exit notepad (if necessary) and go back to the commandline. You can use Alt-Tab if it has moved out of view.

At the commandline type:

<DVD Drive Letter>:\drivers\DPInst.exe /PATH <Drivers Disk Drive Letter>:\<Driver Files Path>

In my case, my DVD Drive was on G: and my storage drivers were on a USB key in H:\i386\.

So at the commandline, I typed:

G:\drivers\DPInst.exe /PATH H:\i386\

/PATH is a switch telling DPInst.exe you are giving it a directory path. It is not a variable, so don't replace it.

After you execute DPInst.exe, a Driver Wizard will appear. Click Next, and t will show that the storage driver you just added was installed. Click Finish. If you have other storage drivers to load, repeating this process should work (I just had one). After you finish with the wizard, click "Refresh" on the "Where do you want to install Windows?" screen. The harddrives that required the storage driver(s) should now appear in the list. Continue installing Vista as normal and I hope this solution works well for everyone.

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Neowinian

jadedraverla

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Thanks for the tip, but this process didn't work for me. The drivers load correctly and the setup is able to go forward until the reboot, then I get the standard BSOD.

BTW, I have onboard VIA SATA (not RAID) on ASUS A8V Deluxe and have tried both 5.10a and 4.3C drivers. Also, to get the VIA drivers to even install you have to use the /F to force install the drivers, otherwise Vista setup just says at the end of driver install that your already available driver (which doesn't actually exist) is newer than the one you were trying to load.

Also, I'm trying this on x86 Vista -- x64 Vista would load the correct x64 drivers, but clicking refresh till the end of time wouldn't bring up any drives to install on.

Anyone with any more ideas, or who has successfully used this process on a VIA SATA controller, I would appreciate the help.

Apprentice

NesTle

Posted
Posted
Thanks for the tip, but this process didn't work for me.  The drivers load correctly and the setup is able to go forward until the reboot, then I get the standard BSOD.

BTW, I have onboard VIA SATA (not RAID) on ASUS A8V Deluxe and have tried both 5.10a and 4.3C drivers.  Also, to get the VIA drivers to even install you have to use the /F to force install the drivers, otherwise Vista setup just says at the end of driver install that your already available driver (which doesn't actually exist) is newer than the one you were trying to load.

Also, I'm trying this on x86 Vista -- x64 Vista would load the correct x64 drivers, but clicking refresh till the end of time wouldn't bring up any drives to install on.

Anyone with any more ideas, or who has successfully used this process on a VIA SATA controller, I would appreciate the help.

586566696[/snapback]

same here with same board :(

Enthusiast

Akirajds

Posted
Posted
i managed to get my sata raid working fine... just put in a regular drive and just installed vista to my raid. the other drive stays unchanged apart from maybe a little change to the boot.ini file if it had an os on it  :cool:

586568675[/snapback]

huh? ya lost me. :blink: :no: :huh:

Apprentice

NesTle

Posted
Posted (edited)
i managed to get my sata raid working fine... just put in a regular drive and just installed vista to my raid. the other drive stays unchanged apart from maybe a little change to the boot.ini file if it had an os on it?:cool::

586568675[/snapback]

you've made your ATA drive the active one then load the drivers and installed vista on de sata one?

jadedraverla it seems that if you just put the SATA on the promise controler (the lower sata controller) you can install it that way will try it later cause for now I have to go to work:))

A8V Promise Raid controller with SATA works. (Need to enable raid only if one HD is installed)
Edited by NesTle
Community Regular

Hais

Posted
Posted
you've made your ATA drive the active one then load the drivers and installed vista on de sata one?

586569029[/snapback]

yep, i kept gettin bsod everytime i tried to install by booting from the cd, however when i put in a ata drive it seemed to let me start installing. i didnt change any data on the ata drive myself or install any part of vista to it. the only change made to it was the boot.ini file on it as it had win xp on it (i borrowed it from another pc) but thats easy to fix in notepad.

Neowinian

jadedraverla

Posted
Posted
jadedraverla it seems that if you just put the SATA on the promise controler (the lower sata controller) you can install it that way will try it later cause for now I have to go to work :)

586569029[/snapback]

Well, no go for me, although I'm somewhat confused on the directions you quoted on enabling RAID. Basically, using RAID mode I get no hard disks detected by BIOS (I don't want to create an array and wipe everything out) and using IDE mode I get drives detected to BIOS, but none to Vista setup, evev after installing the drivers.

Will keep looking.

Thanks.

Veteran

AQUaDeX

Posted
Posted

That method only installs the driver during the setup process on WinPE, when the computer reboots it boots into the real Windows Vista environment, which the drivers were not installed, therefore you get the BSOD.

Simply put: no workaround/solutions at this moment, just wait for Beta 2 or the October build man...

Neowinian

jadedraverla

Posted
Posted
The older SATA controllers already have a good deal of support in the Vista installer. For instance, the VIA SATA controller in the VT8237 Southbridges, which cover a number of their chipsets.

586570702[/snapback]

Actually, this is the controller used in my system and those of many having problems (ASUS A8V Deluxe motherboard), but it has NO Vista support in the current version, and was only able to be installed from driver disk in previous builds.

Oh well. I guess I'm giving up until October CTP (if there really ends up being anoother CTP before beta 2).

Grand Master

Allan

Posted
Posted

using my WD SATA drive on my mobo (noted below in red) I had NO problems installing straight to HDD. No drivers needed (that I had to put a disk in) ... it was just like installing 98 or XP or 2003.

Neowinian

E_Surge

Posted
Posted

i have an asus a8v deluxe using via sata vt8237 controller and build 5048 works, no drivers needed. Build 5219 however, doesn't :( ...

i tried the methods of installing the drivers from the previous page but i only get a bsod on restart. i have tried installing from build 5048 to 5219 but that results in a big waste of time.

i guess i have to get an ide hd since thats the only way i can see it working. i have tried the same thing but using my promise controller on the mobo and no go either. although i didn't spend too much time on this controller cuz i don't use it often.

any tips or things to try or drivers to download?

Enthusiast

d0ogie

Posted
Posted

I have 3 SATA drives on an Intel ICH6R RAID/AHCI controller (925X chipset). 2 Raptors which are in a RAID0 array, and a cheap Maxtor drive that is in there for Linux, Longhorn etc. None of the drives are detected, even when I load the appropriate driver using the above method. That is, unless I turn the RAID features off in the BIOS and set it to a pure AHCI controller. Then, everything works fine out of the box - except my RAID array is detected as two individual drives, which doesn't help. Oh well, it does install though.

Hope this helps some of the Intel folks - bottom line, turn your RAID off and set the controller to pure AHCI or ATA, whichever applies to you.

Grand Master

Max Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted
I have 3 SATA drives on an Intel ICH6R RAID/AHCI controller (925X chipset). 2 Raptors which are in a RAID0 array, and a cheap Maxtor drive that is in there for Linux, Longhorn etc. None of the drives are detected, even when I load the appropriate driver using the above method. That is, unless I turn the RAID features off in the BIOS and set it to a pure AHCI controller. Then, everything works fine out of the box - except my RAID array is detected as two individual drives, which doesn't help. Oh well, it does install though.

Hope this helps some of the Intel folks - bottom line, turn your RAID off and set the controller to pure AHCI or ATA, whichever applies to you.

586587051[/snapback]

They can turn RAID off as long as they don't value anything thats on them :wacko:

Enthusiast

d0ogie

Posted
Posted
They can turn RAID off as long as they don't value anything thats on the:wacko:o:

586587066[/snapback]

Doing this on an Intel/Dell board is non-destructive, as long as you don't install to one of the drives in the array. As always, check with your hardware manufacturer before changing settings, yadda yadda.

I'd also like to note that, once Vista is installed, you can set the controller back to RAID and it will still boot fine. I would suggest disabling in BIOS and/or unplugging drives involved in your RAID array while installing Windows Vista.

But, we're all geeks here, and I made the assumption that we would all know these things.

  • 2 weeks later...
Neowinian

Mhaddy

Posted
Posted

Hi guys, I've got a similar problem. I'm running two SATA 160GB Seagate HDDs on my computer and I am trying to install 5219 on one of them. If I launch the installer from Windows, it will detect the drives and I can begin the installation process -- but when the PC reboots and continues its installation routine, I'll get a "Error copying files" error.

So, I decided to try this method of booting from the setup DVD and loading the drivers for my SATA drives. I can get the driver installation wizard to start but the driver installation always falls (giving me an "install failed" status message).

Any ideas?

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