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not gentoo-specific, but.... XP not detecting hard drive?
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thelee
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 04, 2008 7:19 am    Post subject: not gentoo-specific, but.... XP not detecting hard drive? Reply with quote

So, I've always been meaning to dual-boot gentoo and XP, but I just never had an XP cd until recently when I got one from a university store. The problem is, I've run into a really big snafu trying to install it. It basically states that, after the intiial blue screen of loading some temporary files, tells me that it can't detect a hard drive and only gives me the option to quit.

So first, I did some research and I learned that the target partition I had made was an extended and not a primary partition, so I did alot of refactoring with gparted and tried again.

The second time, I thought maybe it couldn't detect anything because I had formatted the target partition as NTFS instead of FAT32, so I reformatted the primary partition as FAT32 and tried again.

And still no go.

So, some information, in case it helps to diagnose the problem:
a) The partition that I'm trying to install this on is not at the "beginning" of the drive, if it matters. It's /dev/sda2 instead of /dev/sda1.
b) My hard drive device is /dev/sda instead of something like /dev/hda I guess, I don't know if that matters.
c) I already have alot of partitions set up for gentoo; 2 primary partitions, 1 really big extended partition with lots of logical partitions inside. All told I have ~134gigs of space partitioned for gentoo and 26gigs that I've set aside for the XP install (as mentioned before, currently a FAT32 partition at /dev/sda2).

I'm thinking that maybe newer drivers are needed to interface with my hard drive or something and I'll have better luck with Vista? Though I'd rather not do Vista cause I mainly want a windows partition so I can play older windows-only computer games (like Fallout, Icewind Dale 2, Civilization IV), many of which have minor problems with Vista. Plus I don't feel like shelling out cash for a student version of Vista (especially since I've graduated half a year ago).
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padoor
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 04, 2008 7:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

xp or any windows wants to load at atart sector of the hdd only.
means just after the boot loader only dos wants to reside.if you have hd0,0 your boot for gentoo you will have to move it. probably whole gentoo to after first 10 gb ie if you plan to give 10 for xp.
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thelee
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 04, 2008 9:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

hmm... moving a fat32 or ntfs partition to the "front" of my hard drive didn't do anything to get the xp installer to recognize that i have a hard drive.

i don't see what that necessarily has to do with it, as the wiki page on dualbooting gentoo and xp indicates that so long as i have an ntfs partition or something, the xp install cd should detect it.
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padoor
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 04, 2008 12:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

eventhough it can find an ntfs partition it will check for a space to write boot files in the boot sector.
if it cannot find atleast 3 mb c: space it will just say cannot find a hdd.
i have had this problem 3 times before.
after it has a small c: in the boot sector included space you can install xp in extended space.but it should have space for formating fat for io.sys and command.com and a few mre dos files.
it is obvious your bios finds the hdd and you are able to boot gentoo ...i hope.
check with cfdisk what is in the boot space [required for dos]
gentoo /boot can be anywhere.

xp is adement on having the 0000 to some decent size c: :(
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Dagger
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 04, 2008 1:37 pm    Post subject: Re: not gentoo-specific, but.... XP not detecting hard drive Reply with quote

thelee wrote:
It basically states that, after the intiial blue screen of loading some temporary files, tells me that it can't detect a hard drive and only gives me the option to quit.


that generally happens on newer computers (remember that XP is 6 years old system). At the time of it's release it didn't support all AHCI controllers so during the blue screen startup you have an option to press F6 and prepare the Floppy disk (yaay for not allowing usb drives! For one computer I had to buy usb floppy drive! SIC) with driver. After that it WILL detect your drive. It can show than that you dont have available partition but at least show your drive. If you prepared partition for it it will allow you to install.

You should have floppy disk delivered with your motherboard. If you can't find it please post your motherboard model and we will find you the right driver for you!
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NeddySeagoon
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 04, 2008 1:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

thelee,

Windows XP, out of the box, has little or no support for SATA controllers.
You will need the support floppy for your controller ... and it has to be a floppy

If your SATA chipset is AHCI, it may have a BIOS option to make it behave as IDE. While that works, its slow, and Gentoo will hate it.
However, you can install XP like that, then install the XP AHCI driver and switch the BIOS back to AHCI,

The XP install will trash the grub install to the MBR. XP must be in a primary partition but any one is OK.
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thelee
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 05, 2008 9:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hmm... well, I have a newfangled laptop so I don't have a floppy drive. So, if I can't make my SATA drive behave like an IDE, can I then try a Vista install cd and will that presumably have better support?
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padoor
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 06, 2008 2:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

you can try to install part of xp in laptop hdd and part in external hdd
it needs minimum of 5gb for xp .
try boot up from laptop hdd and program files and all from external
it will be a good experiment.
does the xp cd not offer to install in the laptop hdd built in?
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Section_8
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 06, 2008 2:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I recently had the same issue installing xp on a new box with all sata drives. What I did was pull the xp sata drivers off the mobo driver CD and then used a utility called nlite (http://www.nliteos.com/) to create an xp install CD with the sata drivers slipstreamed in. Then it installed without a hitch.
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hirakendu
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 06, 2008 3:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yes, the above comment says it all. If you have a ahci sata hard drive / hard drive that requires special drivers / raid controller etc, use this utility called nlite to push your drivers in. Especially handy on notebooks without having to get a usb floppy drive.
I have a dell vostro notebook for which I had to insert the iastor.inf driver to get the intel mobile 965 ahci controller and hard drive recognized. The other option is to disable ahci in the bios and then install xp, which might hurt performance (i have observed same performance though using hdparm) or power savings.
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