XP install help

[pcostanza]

Never had a problem like this before. I'm trying to install XP Pro on a SATA rack drive (hot swap drive) and it installs ok during setup but the first time XP setup reboots, I get a [SIZE=3]'A disk read error occurred Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart' error. As I've installed XP on the same system but on a true internal drive and not had this problem, I can't be sure that's what that error means.I've installed W7 beta and Ubuntu on other drives in this same device with no problems and wonder if it might be the SATA drivers (F6 at startup) but, never needed these before as well and, without a floppy drive, it's problematic to load them.
Just curious as to what you think it might be.
Google turned up something interesting I've not tried yet (not at home to try it now). [/SIZE]The problem solved by __disabling IDE bus master __ in BIOS. I'm not sure why this would work but I can't knock it until I've tried it.
The drive has plenty of space and is free of errors and NTFS formatted.

[whurlston]

Yeah, you would need to use F6 and install the SATA/RAID controller driver. Some motherboards have a BIOS setting that will allow you to set the sata controller to emulate an IDE controller. If yours does, you can use that for installing and then load the RAID controller driver once Windows is installed. I've never tried the "disable IDE bus mastering" trick.

[pcostanza]

Thanks, I just am stumped as to how to install those drivers without a floppy drive. Gonna due more looking for how to do that.

[whurlston]

Yeah, I had a floppy that I had to keep handy for those situations. Finally just bought an external USB.

[pcostanza]

Actually, I do have a portable USB Floppy drive....just gotta find some 3.5" floppies.
Can do the nLite trick as well. Might even have one of those laying around. I'll make this work.

[cosmocat]

Odd that XP install gets that far. I installed XP on a laptop with an Sata drive ( and no floppy) . I couldn't get XP to install at all because it reported it couldn't find a disk to install on.
I used nLite to build a new CD with the sata drivers on, and also added in XP SP3 as well to save time later on. That worked fine.
I would definately give nLite a go with your extra sata drivers, but I wonder how XP had got as far as it did ( using some semi compatible default driver perhaps ? )