sata boot problem

[swade]

I am trying to add a Seagate Barracuda SATA drive to my system in preperation to upgrading someday. The system recognizes the drive and I can store data on it. The problem occurs when I disconnect the ide hd and try to install XP pro on it and make it a boot drive. If I enable the boot rom in the bios, it will hang up during the boot. When I try to install XP it will not recognize the drive. I have put the sata driver on a floppy disc and loaded them during the initial installation, but on the reboot it does not recognize the sata drive. I am using an Abit an7 mb with latest bios (19), AMD 2000+, 1 gb ram. Any help will be appreciated.
Thanks,
Steve

[Midknyte]

What model SATA drive? If it's a SATAII drive, did you set the compatibility jumper?

http://www.seagate.com/images/suppor...sata_block.gif

[swade]

Since I considered the Abit an7 to be an older MB, I set the jumper to 1.5 gb/sec rather than leave it the normal 3.0 gb/sec per instruction manual.

[Shinma]

I am trying to add a Seagate Barracuda SATA drive ... problem occurs when I disconnect the ide hd and try to install XP pro on it and make it a boot drive. If I enable the boot rom in the bios, it will hang up during the boot...

Update the mobo BIOS.

Following posted at ABIT regarding BIOS updates:
Fixed a problem where the system cannot boot into Windows if

1. The OS is installed in the SATA hard disk when both the SATA and PATA hard disks are present.
2. The PATA hard disk is removed after the OS installation...

[swade]

According to the Abit website, an719 is the last bios update. I'm fairly sure I have that one.

[Midknyte]

If I enable the boot rom in the bios, it will hang up during the boot

You need to have the boot rom enabled, since you are booting from a third party chip. Even though the SATA is onboard, it's a separate chip from the main chipset.

Did you check the hard drive boot order/priority? There should be one that says "add on card" or "SATA card" or something similar.

[Shinma]

Just to clear things up,

Last time I installed WindowsXP with slipstreamed SP2/SP3 CD,
On a nForce2 and nForce3 mobo,
It did not require any drivers via floppy when SATA was set to IDE mode.