Vista installation problems!

[treyking11]

hello all. i am trying to install a fresh copy of vista on a clean western digital wd5000ks sata drive that is connected with a via-150r (vt6421a) controller card. vista cannot see the drive for the installation, and i cannot find a vista driver for the card, hard drive, or anything. am i looking for a hard drive, motherboard, or controller card driver? any help would be appreciated. thanks

 

[moose64]

Did you format the hard drive.

 

[treyking11]

no, it is fresh out of the box. the hard drive that had my previous operating system (xp) crashed and i am having to start fresh. no other computer to format with...

 

[piratepast40]

Just format with a basic recovery floppy.

 

[piratepast40]

You're right - FDisk to partition and then the format command. My mistake.

 

[Zorg]

You're right - FDisk to partition and then the format command. My mistake.

I think he might have other troubles. Vista doesn't need the drive to be partitioned or formatted in order to load. It will see the drive as unallocated space when it looks for the hardware on the computer and it will do the partitioning and formatting at that time. Just as XP will.

OP what are your system Specs?

 

[Zorg]

hello all. i am trying to install a fresh copy of vista on a clean western digital wd5000ks sata drive that is connected with a via-150r (vt6421a) controller card. vista cannot see the drive for the installation, and i cannot find a vista driver for the card, hard drive, or anything. am i looking for a hard drive, motherboard, or controller card driver? any help would be appreciated. thanks

Here is a link, I know it is weak and I only read a few posts. You may glean a few tips like the following excerpts:

Pros: The card installed flawlessly on Windows Vista. Very easy setup. Directions where very clear. Did not have instructions for Vista but just go through XP instructions and it will be fine

and

Pros: Easy to install. Booted machine windows prompted for driver disk, sata drive was recognized

and

Other Thoughts: The Syba support site never seems to work so don't lose the driver CD.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16815124023

Edit: It looks like these installs were additional drives on systems that already had the OS installed. Obviously a driver is required without System specs It is hard for anyone to help.

Good Luck

 

[piratepast40]

The bottom of this page has a link to a Vista driver:http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...egory=74941&ssPageName=STORE:PROMOBOX:NEWLIST
Here's another link that touches on your problem but not sure if this does it completely for your situation: http://www.itweek.co.uk/personal-computer-world/features/2187032/hands-vista-driving-seat

Hope that helps

 

[piratepast40]

This is from via and (I believe) is the same driver as the link from the ebay page: http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageID=420&OSID=36&CatID=2920&SubCatID=117

I briefly looked at the software forum here on THG but didn't see your controller chipset listed in DaSickNinjas' sticky. BTW, if you get things working correctly, you might want to add your solution to the Vista section.

 

[Rogue77777]

Don't mean to add my 2 cent, but as long as you're using a Vista full install cd and it support your ( VIA VT6421A High Speed 2 port SATA PCI card) which i believe it doesn't (Supported OS: Windows 98SE/ME/NT 4.0/2000/XP), it will automatically detect your new Hd.
I believe your problem is with your controll card. http://www.techfocus.co.uk/pages/product/product.asp?prod=TFPC20&ctgry=PCI-Cards&TFPC20&cookie%5Ftest=1

Get a controller card that suppoorts vista or go with a new motherboard and you'll be fine.
P.s: Don't forget to load the additional drivers (for controller card) when starting the installation. 8)

 

[Zorg]

I think he might have other troubles. Vista doesn't need the drive to be partitioned or formatted in order to load. It will see the drive as unallocated space when it looks for the hardware on the computer and it will do the partitioning and formatting at that time. Just as XP will.

OP what are your system Specs?

Actually the first time you have to partition the disk windows cannot see it. Windows can see any partition or corrupted partition but without any partition (like a new hdd for example) windows cannot even know what size is the disk or whatever else. doing fdisk is a must on a new earned hard disk drive

I just took an old 30GB Maxtor drive and did a zero write with Seatools. So, no partition, no format, and no partition or format remnants. All zeros just like they come from the factory. I booted to a Vista DVD and it saw the drive and created the partition, formatted the partition and loaded Vista. It didn't even ask me any questions it just did it all by itself. Either post that you think something is correct or make sure you are correct. Because when you post what you think is correct, as though you actually have a clue, and it is not correct it makes it a lot harder for the person that is having trouble to determine what is really wrong. I already knew what the outcome of my little test was going to be, I just didn't want to have to argue with you about it.

 

[treyking11]

thanks for all the replies! i am trying new drivers for the card, will keep you posted.

 

[pat]

thanks for all the replies! i am trying new drivers for the card, will keep you posted.

Your chipset don't support SATA2 HD.. all you have to do is to move the little jumper on the hdd to have it work as SATA1.5.. check the drive label.

 

[Zorg]

thanks for all the replies! i am trying new drivers for the card, will keep you posted.

Your chipset don't support SATA2 HD.. all you have to do is to move the little jumper on the hdd to have it work as SATA1.5.. check the drive label.

Good point. I'm sure you saw he was using a PCI controller which is probably where some of his problems are, but I looked at the card and sure enough it's SATA 150. So, maybe he has two problems. I never would have considered that a current stand alone PCI SATA controller would be only SATA 150. I guess that's what you get from Syba for $25.00.

 

[pat]

thanks for all the replies! i am trying new drivers for the card, will keep you posted.

Your chipset don't support SATA2 HD.. all you have to do is to move the little jumper on the hdd to have it work as SATA1.5.. check the drive label.

Good point. I'm sure you saw he was using a PCI controller which is probably where some of his problems are, but I looked at the card and sure enough it's SATA 150. So, maybe he has two problems. I never would have considered that a current stand alone PCI SATA controller would be only SATA 150. I guess that's what you get from Syba for $25.00.

SATA 150 or SATA2 don't really matter because there is no noticable performance, as drives are still the slowest link in the equation, and even the fastest SATA hdd cannot even close to saturate the slowest SATA interface. All that is lost is the enhanced feature that SATA2 brought, like hot swapping.

Second, being a PCI controller, it really shouldnt cause any problem if he use the drivers at the first stage of the installation.

IMHO, the card should be sufficient enough as until some time ago, onboard IDE controller were all PCI based and were performing good enough for most of the user.

 

[treyking11]

ok. i have loaded the correct drivers (i have the "hide drivers that dont apply to the hardware" box ticked, so i assume they are correct) and the drive still is not recognized. i have tried both sata inputs on the card and still nothing, i am about to say screw it and stay with xp (provided i can install xp on this drive). i wont give up just yet, but this is annoying. thanks for all the input. if anyone else would like to thro their 2 cents in i would appreciate it. thanks

 

[pat]

ok. i have loaded the correct drivers (i have the "hide drivers that dont apply to the hardware" box ticked, so i assume they are correct) and the drive still is not recognized. i have tried both sata inputs on the card and still nothing, i am about to say screw it and stay with xp (provided i can install xp on this drive). i wont give up just yet, but this is annoying. thanks for all the input. if anyone else would like to thro their 2 cents in i would appreciate it. thanks

It has nothing to do with drivers, but the controller not able to talk to the drive. Didi you set the jumper?

 

[Zorg]

I agree bandwidth isn't an issue right now. I have a Raptor, it is SATA150, and it is plenty fast enough. I just thought that it can't cost much more, if any to make it SATA300 compliant so why not do it. I noticed Promise and several others do, for not much more cash. Like I said I guess you get no future proofing when you buy the least expensive controller. Who knows he might not be having His current problems with a Promise controller. I think they are only $40-$45.

 

[Icepick]

I'm having what I think is a hard drive problem trying to install Vista.

It's a brand new scratch system, and when I try to install Vista it sees the two Samsung 500GB SATA2 hard drives, but it says that Vista can't boot from them, so I can't install.

The current boot sequence set in my BIOS is DVD drive / HDD / HDD

I don't know if that's the problem, or if it's something else.

 

[BustedSony]

ok. i have loaded the correct drivers (i have the "hide drivers that dont apply to the hardware" box ticked, so i assume they are correct) and the drive still is not recognized. i have tried both sata inputs on the card and still nothing, i am about to say screw it and stay with xp (provided i can install xp on this drive). i wont give up just yet, but this is annoying. thanks for all the input. if anyone else would like to thro their 2 cents in i would appreciate it. thanks

See if XP will install. If it does then indeed you are short a Vista driver, but I doubt that's the problem. You could install a basic XP, then upgrade to Vista, if your version supports that.

 

[rodney_ws]

Don't mean to add my 2 cent, but as long as you're using a Vista full install cd and it support your ( VIA VT6421A High Speed 2 port SATA PCI card) which i believe it doesn't (Supported OS: Windows 98SE/ME/NT 4.0/2000/XP), it will automatically detect your new Hd.
I believe your problem is with your controll card. http://www.techfocus.co.uk/pages/product/product.asp?prod=TFPC20&ctgry=PCI-Cards&TFPC20&cookie%5Ftest=1

Get a controller card that suppoorts vista or go with a new motherboard and you'll be fine.
P.s: Don't forget to load the additional drivers (for controller card) when starting the installation. 8)

What he said. Vista is not recognizing that controller card... so if it's like previous Windows versions, you'll need to press F6 somewhere during the installation and provide the installation with a drivers disk so it will be able to access that drive through your non-natively-supported controller.

Or just buy a new motherboard with SATA onboard.

 

[mitch074]

You might want to try - just to be sure that the hardware isn't fried - to boot a recent Linux LiveCD. At the very least, it'll allow you to initialize the drive (create the MBR and a partition) if the card is actually recognized.