2 questions, 1. win xp installation in SATA drive and 2. activation of win XP

As mentioned in a prior hardware post of mine, one of my hard drives is about to kick the bucket. Therefore, I have to change it and reinstall win xp home. My specs are as follows: MB: INTEL D87PBZ, P4 3GHZ, KINGSTON RAM DDR 1GB, TWO HARD DRIVES: 1. 120 gb SEAGATE SATA AND 2. 20GB SAMSUNG SV2001H ATA, GEFORCE 6800 GT OC, AUDIGY 2. I have two questions hoping you can help me:

A. When I put this system together, for some reason initially i was unable to install win XP into the SATA drive. To work around this issue, i installed win xp in the ATA drive and then within windows (when the SATA drive was recognized) I (re)installed win xp into the SATA drive. This gave me a dual OS system. Both win xp. I tried to erase the OS installed in the ATA drive (even tried removing it), but everytime i did that win would not come up and i would receive a NTLDR is missing message upon boot. My guess is that the boot sector is contained in the ATA drive. So I lived with this minor inconvenience. Now that I have to remove the ATA drive because of failure, I am afraid that i will not be able to install win xp into the SATA drive. Is there a step that I have to take upon installation of win xp for it to recognize a SATA drive? I have bought a replacement for the ATA drive but it is a SATA drive. Please if anyone has any pointers (or idea as to why win xp would not install directly into the SATA drive) they would be appreciated.

B. Since I have to reinstall WIN XP when i replace the drive, i will have to reactivate it. Will I have a problem with this, since i am replacing the drive where the OS (and activation code/whatever) was originally contained. Anyone have any idea????


THKS in advance

I am running the following system

AMD 3200 64bit
1024 Corsair XMS TwinX Pro RAM
2xWester Digital Raptor Drives (SATA)
1x120gb Segate (IDE)
XFX G-Force 6800 Ultra

when i did my first install my intention was to have Xp on 1 of my Raptors, The other one was going to be for downloading abd the 120gb segate was to be a storage drive.

when i installed xp it installed to a sata and tryed to boot it gave me the same problem, i dont no why this occured but the only remedy for it was to stripe(or mirror) my sata drives, then it worked fine. (i think it may have something to do with the fact that sata it mainly for use with raid)

One thing did you check in your BIOS that your sata channels were enabled? You do have to enable them to be able to boot

in answer to the second part of your question you will have to reactivate windows but this doesnt matter i have messed up my computer 4-5 times in a day and had to reactivate xp this many times!! you can reactivate the same copy of windows 25 times and then they will re-issue you with a new product key via the telephone service

when the xp install runs, at some point it will ask for raid drivers. at this point you need to have the sata drivers (non-raid if youre not going to be running raid) on a floppy. xp will pull the drivers off and continue to finish the install. if you use raid drivers, its definitely going to insist on a raid format

Redwench, that is the answer I was looking for. The only problem is I only have one floppy that came with the MB. It says RAID DRIVER. Where do i find the SATA drivers non-raid. Any suggestions????? Thks as always.

the SATA drivers will be on the RAID disk

they should be. if you cant tell them apart, locate the ones you want to use on the motherboard site, and download them.

Thks, I will try it as suggested. I just have to wait for the new drive to arrive and hope my other drive does not expire before that. I will post the results. thks again

You can obtain the non-RAID drivers from the Silicon Image website.
I have not been able to find non-RAID drivers on Giga-Byte's site.
Also the RAID drivers from Silicon Image work much better than those from the G-B site.

Go to www.siliconimage.com click on Support -> Resource Center
Click on "Launch CRC" (at bottom of page)
On the tree on the left click on DOWNLOADS -> Drivers -> SiI3x112
For the non-RAID driver:
Click on "SiI3x12: Serial ATA (SATA) Windows IDE Driver - Released"
For the RAID driver:
Click on "SiI3x12: Serial ATA (SATA) Windows RAID Driver - Released"

Unzip one OR other set to a floppy and use the F6 function to load the driver at install time.

Good luck!

Thanks to all for your help. Managed to change the drive and install win xp in the new drive using the F6 install option. I guess i missed it the first time. Activation also was no problem. THKS