windows set-up doesnt see sata drive

During the setup it will ask you have any SCSI or RAID controllers that need to be installed and hit F6, you need to have the drivers for the SATA controller on a floppy disk, hit F6 when it says to and load the driver from the floppy.

Thats what I did the first time i had to install windows...
Do i have to do that everytime I install windows??

Is there another way i can install these drivers other than using a floppy drive? like a flash chip via usb for example? or via network?

Asus P4800 Deluxe - 3.0C - 4X256MB corsair twinx - 6800GT 256mb - sata w/8mb 160gb - 120gb w/8mb - Thermaltake purepower 480w - Thermaltake XaserIII<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by kopykat on 09/19/05 00:50 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

Yep, everytime you install Windows you will have to do that.
Unfortunately no, at least memory stick or network. During the textmode portion of the install, it's just you, the computer and whatever physical media you have.

But if you're feeling frisky, there is a way to integrate the drivers into the Windows cd. You can slipstream just about anything from service packs and hotfixes to video card drivers. I have mine setup so if I install Windows, the only things I have to install after is my antivirus and defragmenting software. No need to install video card, chipset drivers, NIC, etc.

Check <A HREF="http://unattended.msfn.org/" target="_new">this</A> site out. Should get you going, slipstreaming isn't to hard if you know the basics of how a device driver works, eg. the installer reads where and what to install from the .inf file. If you have any questions about it just post.

Thanks for the link, looks quite interesting.
I've come across another problem now...
When I boot up, it takes like 30 seconds or something for the bios to detect the IDE drive, now itll only detect it if i hit pause and then let it continue, otherwise by the time window loads, the hardrive isnt there to begin with.
I tried looking in the bios of my Asus A7V8X for some kind of delay option, but no cigar. Any idea what I can do to have it search for the hardrive a little longer?

Asus P4800 Deluxe - 3.0C - 4X256MB corsair twinx - 6800GT 256mb - sata w/8mb 160gb - 120gb w/8mb - Thermaltake purepower 480w - Thermaltake XaserIII

The "F6 to intsall SATA drivers" should be fixed in Vista (i hope)...

Polarman

Is your IDE drive a Western Digital? If so, ensure your jumpers are set correctly... WD has two settings for master... one with slave and one without. If you set it to master with slave and there is no slave, BIOS will take it's sweet time detecting the drive... and may eventually not detect it at all.

<font color=red> If you design software that is fool-proof, only a fool will want to use it. </font color=red>