This post discusses a little issue you might face when you are trying to install windows XP on a computer that comes with Serial ATA (SATA or Serial Advanced Technologies Attachement) bus interface. This type of computer systems are the easiest to install because they don’t have jumper settings on the hard drive but if you are trying to install a fresh Windows XP on this type of systems, you are likely to run into a frustrating problem. The SATA driver do not come originally with Windows XP so you must find a way to get it in there on the system to have a successful installation. Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Linux Operating systems do not have this problem, you can install them on SATA computer systems without any problem. Now, how do you know if your computer have a SATA interface? Well, if you can easily open your hard drive compactment, it will be written on the Hard drive. Another way you can detect this problem is when you know you have a perfectly working hard drive in the computer but when trying to install Windows XP, you encounter the error stating that there is no hard drive installed on your computer and you need to install one and make sure there is power supplied to it. This can be frustrating because you know you have the hard drive in there but the freaking installation can not recognize it. If it is a problem of SATA but not hard drive failure, I’m going to describe two ways to overcome that problem. The first one is using a floopy diskette. Go on the manufacture website for your computer model and go to the drivers and downloads section and look for the SATA driver for your model, download it and create a driver diskette with your floppy drive. The instruction to create the driver diskette is usually in a text file associated with the driver. it can be found in a file with names like, readme, instructions, procedure etc. After you create the floppy diskette with your driver, insert your Windows XP CD into the computer and press F6 where it shows below the screen to do it to install other RAID or third party drivers. When you press F6, it will run and come to a screen where you will select your floppy diskette as the source of the drivers and the SATA drivers will be installed on your computer for the installation to proceed successfully. Now, if your computer does not come with floppy diskette drive, then you are in another problem but that can also be solved. You have to purchase a USB floppy diskette driver in other to follow the procedure described above or you have to follow the next procedure I’m about to describe to get your job done. The second procedure is very simply but involves little bite of computer skill. This procedure is called slipstreaming. In this procedure, you download the SATA driver from your manufactures site. Then you download a software called NLITE from http://www.nliteos.com/download.html . Install NLITE on a working computer with CD or DVD burner. Insert your Windows XP CD into this working computer and start NLITE. NLITE will ask you to select the source of you operating system, navigate to the Windows XP CD and select it. It will then ask you to select a place to store the files for the process, you can either create a folder to complete this section or click create new folder button at the buttom of NLITE window and create a folder on your hard drive to store the files. Click next until you come to NLITE window to select the type of integration you want to perform. Select Drivers and Bootable and click next. NLITE will ask you to select the drivers to intergrate and you have to navigate to select the .inf file inside the SATA drivers you’ve downloaded from your computer manufactures site. When succesful, click next on NLITE and continue. Then NLITE gives you the option to create an ISO to burn for your new XP CD. Click make ISO and select to store it somewhere on your hard drive. When it has finished creating the ISO, you are going to get a new blank cd or dvd into the computer and burn that ISO onto it. You can use an ISO image burner from http://www.isoimageburner.com/ or use any ISO burning software of your choice. The CD you have just created contains all you need to install Windows XP on your SATA computer without any other procedure. Just insert it and install XP normally, no need to do anything again. The SATA drivers are now integrated and XP will install successfully without any problem.
As a side note, based on the operating system on the computer you are using to create your intergrated XP CD, you might have some problems creating the CD but l can’t cover all of that here. The best way is to try another computer if one failed to create your CD. If you tried everything and it all failed, then it’s time to get a technician to complete the installation for you and the best site to look for one is here http://mypcdr.net/. Happy intergrating drivers for your Windows XP CD.
