I'm trying to install Vista home premium 64-bit (OEM disc) on my first build :
GIGABYTE GA-EP35C-DS3R LGA 775 Intel P35
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 45nm Wolfdale
Samsung SpinPoint T series 500GB SATA HDD (OEM)
EVGA 512mb GeForce 8800GT graphics card
Samsung DVD-R/RW
4 GB Kingston DDR2 RAM

Anyways, my BIOS recognizes everything I've installed, including my HDD(I only have one HDD, and don't want RAID). It's set as SATAII 0 Master. But when I try to install Vista (OEM), I get to the part where it asks me where to install it, and my HDD doesn't show up. I can try to load a driver from the options, but I have no driver discs (other than my MoBo's)! If I click "browse", it gives the option to "format local disk C:" . I tried that, and it says" make sure connections are correct, and that files are not read-only". My HDD didn't come with any discs, and it wasn't even wrapped in an anti-static bag. Why would my BIOS recognize it, but not Vista? Is there any other way to format/ partition my HDD? Thanks to anyone who can make sense of this!

I forgot to mention, in the MoBo instructions, it says you need a floppy drive in order to set up a RAID array, as well as a setup disk. But it says "for install Vista without RAID, skip these steps and refer to installation without RAID". But under that section, it still says I need a floppy drive with a driver. Other forums say I shouldn't need to us a floppy. I really wish someone could clear things up for me. Thank you again!

You probably do need to use the floppy, unless you have the option to use IDE emulation for the SATA.

In my BIOS, under Integrated Peripherals, I have it set to "Onboard SATA/IDE Ctrl Mode : IDE". Is that the same thingas emulation? The other options were AHCI, and RAID/IDE.

That is what it should be...you shouldn't need the drivers, but probably do sor some reason or other. The easiest is going to be to put then on a floppy...

You mean the HDD drivers? Because I looked on Samsung's website, and they never released any drivers for any of their HDD's.

You mean the HDD drivers?
The drivers needed are the motherboard chipset drivers for the host controllers on the motherboard that control RAID/SATA/SCSI implementations. They should be available on the CD that came with the mobo or from the mobo maker's website. Some such mobo CDs are bootable and may prompt you to insert a floppy so that the drivers can be put onto the floppy automatically. If you don't have a floppy disk drive the options are to get one or to get a USB floppy or to slipstream a DIY installation CD to include the drivers - sometimes easy sometimes not.

It is always perplexing when DOS can see such a drive (or indeed a hardware RAID array) but when the installation CD/DVD cannot. With such SCSI/SATA/RAID controllers DOS just believes what the BIOS tells it but with any NT-Windows Setup once the boot device has been chosen the hardware is polled by the system and the directly supplied BIOS info is ignored. Without the drivers for anything but IDE (or true IDE emulation) then setup cannot see the individual drives and even more confusing for those with some RAID controllers may see two or more drives where DOS only sees one!

Looks like you need:
Intel ICH9R/ICH10R Driver (Preinstall driver, press F6 during Windows* setup to read from floppy)
O.S. : Windows XP 64Bit,Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition 64bit,Windows Vista x64 (64-bit)
and/or
GIGABYTE SATA2 RAID Driver (Preinstall driver, press F6 during Windows* setup to read from floppy)
O.S. : Windows XP 64Bit,Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition 64bit,Windows Vista x64 (64-bit)
from
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/Motherboard/Driver_Model.aspx?ProductID=2740

They seem to be self extracting exe files so put the exe into their own folders prior to running them.

AN IDEA. :)

I have a PCI to IDE RAID controller card fitted with my internal HDD connected to that.

I made an ATA RAID driver Installation Floppy.

Under SOME circumstances I MUST load that driver, but under other circumstances it isn't needed [already supplied].
To be able to access the HDD.
e.g.
NEEDED
When booting a BARTPE CD.
When booting the Recovery Console off the HDD.

NOT NEEDED
When booting a Knoppix 5.1.1 live CD [that includes WINE] (http://iso.linuxquestions.org/knoppix/knoppix-5.1.1/).
I assume Knoppix 5.1.1 includes a suitable ATA RAID driver.
So I wonder...
If you had 2 optical drives...
[You need 2 drives because the Knoppix disk cannot be swapped out for another disk]
Booted Knoppix 5.1.1 in one drive...
And used the included file manager to navigate to the Vista Setup file on the other optical disk [CD?]...
And because Knoppix includes WINE, it might just succeed in running the Setup executable.
I can't test the idea because I only have 1 optical drive fitted.

Perhaps MJC and/or Paul might comment?

I have a PCI to IDE RAID controller card fitted with my internal HDD connected to that - etc.
[For those that don't know: a controller card just about always uses a SCSI interface].
DOS and the DOS based Windows up to WinME rely only on the BIOS to see and access RAID/SCSI/SATA (and partition access is limited to FAT partitions).
The NT based Windows from Win2K upwards rely on the BIOS to select a boot device but need the Windows Drivers to see or to accurately see any RAID/SCSI/SATA volumes. Sometimes the drivers may have been included - particularly with a modern SP or OS along with an older chipset but mostly they need to be supplied using F6 or a correctly slipstreamed CD. If no drives can be detected during setup then F6 probably needs to be invoked with the correct drivers. BIOS that can set SATAs as SATA or as IDE usually dont require drivers when set as IDE.
Linux behaves akin to the NT based windows but differs in that there is no "PlugNPlay". It all depends on the actual kernel and whether there is inherent support for the chipsets on the mobo or not. It may or may not be possible to use a cheat code and install necessary modules at boot time but WINE has nothing to do with the boot process and if a linux distro is capable of seeing drives accurately then it just means the kernel has native support for the controllers.


Loading a BartPE is almost identical to a WinXP install but you can be sure you will need F6 drivers.

A boot to an installed recovery console would similarly need the drivers supplied but can also be confused by the command line in boot.ini since it may not find the bootsect.dos file in the path supplied. This is because C: (as defined by the relevant boot.ini) will be the C: drive that a DOS installation would find using the rules for Drive Letter Assignments and, somewhat ironically, this might not be the same (because of Hard Drive Assignments by the BIOS) as that provided by the relevant boot.ini file. This is, I think, why booting to an installed recovery console from boot.ini on a floppy may fail.

A caution for those running RAID arrays.

RAID arrays can easily be broken by the NT-OSes (including the recovery console, setup CDs and a BartPE Live CD) and Linux if the RAID drivers are not supplied by F6 or the kernel has no native support for the array controllers. Usually with NT-Windows there will be no visible volume but it can happen that all the drives in the array will be seen rather than the array per se and the same thing can happen when a Linux distro polls the hardware. This is the one main reason I avoid Linux based Imaging or Imaging from a BartPE when I have a system with RAID on it. The recovery console and Acronins and running a repair installation of WinXP have all broken RAID arrays on different occasions. Acronis used to be Linux based but I'm not sure if this is still the case.

1. "if a linux distro is capable of seeing drives accurately then it just means the kernel has native support for the controllers"
Well, Knoppix 5.1.1 can certainly see my HDD without any need to load the ATA drive controllers off my floppy.
What chance it might include suitable drivers for DrSick's drive controllers?

2. "WINE has nothing to do with the boot process"
Knew that already.
What I was thinking was...
Because WINE is included in Knoppix 5.1.1 it MIGHT just manage to run the Windows installation executable file.
What do you think? Worth a try?
Could you test the idea on your system?

What chance it might include suitable drivers for DrSick's drive controllers?Pretty good that a recent Knoppix/Ubuntu or other distro would see all - but there's only one way to find out. If no joy then the Ubuntu forums for one are pretty good at sorting out the workarounds or updates.

WINE is for running applications; not for setting up hardware. Many windows exes will run; which one are you considering?

1. "WINE is for running applications; not for setting up hardware"
I'm aware of that. [See 2 below]

2. "Many windows exes will run; which one are you considering"
I thought I'd said it quite clearly, but perhaps not.
My intention is that DrSick should use Knoppix and its included WINE to attempt to run the Vista installation executable file.
Either he could run it direct from the optical disk or else copy the installation fileset from the optical disk to some other storage media like a Flash Drive or external HDD and run it from there.
e.g.
I just now copied a Windows installation fileset [Win95] from an optical disk to a folder on a partition on my internal HDD.
Then I booted my Knoppix 5.1.1 CD and used the file manager to run the Setup.exe file.
A warning came up saying something like:
Setup [for Win95] cannot run from within WinNT. [It was being run by Knoppix/WINE]
Run from DOS or from a pre-Win95 version of Windows.
So I guess WINE must be simulating a WinNT system.
Hence I'll now try to run the Win2000Pro winnt32.exe installation file instead [perhaps from my Flash Drive] and see what I get.

The most relevant part of the first post is:
and my HDD doesn't show up
Vista setup is starting OK but the HDD isn't seen because the drivers are not loaded or the IDE emulation by the BIOS doesn't work in this instance. Running setup from another location won't overcome this difficulty. Just because you have loaded a linux kernel doesn't mean you will be any better off because even if the setup was miraculously allowed to begin the drives would still be invisible when Vista was loaded; because no drivers were installed using F6 (or the equivalent in Vista).

A similar thing used to happen installing Windows 2k/xp/2k3 by running winnt32 from windows or winnt from dos - you still needed to load the drivers using F6. Running setup from Win9x is completely different - a DOS-based OS and so the OS doesnt poll the hardware for itself - it just needs to find a prepared visible FAT partition. If you get to install W2k using winnt32 from WINE (the NE stands for Not an Emulator) then that is nice to know but if you need the F6 drivers then you will need them just as you would need them from an installation CD.

PS Not entirely relevant to this thread but a useful article (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc160880.aspx) nonetheless. I can see "the logic" of thinking that if Linux can "see" the drives that Windows would somehow inherit the "drivers from Linux"; but it doesn't work that way.

We seem to be misunderstanding each other somewhere. :confused:

My thinking is...
That since Knoppix loads its own ATA controller drivers [or whatever it is that it does]...
In my case...
With Knoppix loaded...
Its file manager was able to see the contents of my internal HDD.
Since the HDD was able to be accessed...
All that was then necessary was for a Windows installation executable to be run.

I tried running both winnt.exe & winnt32.exe [Win2000Pro]...
In both cases the WINE process began [shown down on the taskbar]...
But the attempt was unsuccessful in both cases. :(

Fairly typical...
Sometimes WINE succeeds, sometimes not.

Had this succeeded it might have suggested that DrSick could try the method on his own system to install Vista.

"I can see "the logic" of thinking that if Linux can "see" the drives that Windows would somehow inherit the "drivers from Linux"; but it doesn't work that way"
Are you saying that even though Knoppix had drivers and could therefore access the HDD, once WINE began running the accessibility would be lost?
Or are you saying that once the installation of Windows began, suitable drivers would need to be installed, and the Knoppix drivers are not suitable for Windows?

Where to begin? You have said that you understand that WINE is for installing applications - yet installing an operating system is not an application; how would you start it or create a shortcut to it once installed??! Once a windows setup starts it creates its own kernel from which to operate, does the initial stuff and then reboots to continue the process. The simulated WINE reboot is not even the same as a system reboot. Unlike a VM, rebooting WINE is not trying to emulate a virtual PC - it is just trying to allow Windows programs to run from within Linux using a virtual registry and a virtual drive, etc, etc.

The C: drive is almost always the Windows system drive yet WINE creates a virtual C: drive into which applications can be installed. Which drive would setup nominate as C: after its installation? - it would supposedly try to use the virtual C: drive but this would not correlate with the BIOS in any way.

The best you could hope for is that you would finish up with a crazy sort of dual boot running from the virtual C: drive within WINE (WINE doesnt even call it a virtual drive but a fake drive if memory serves) but since the "WINE Windows" is a composite affair and not a real or emulated OS you would be on a back road to nowhere.

Finally, Linux drivers and Windows Drivers are uniquely different. If you consider that you cannot simply install Linux programs on Windows and vice versa why would Drivers be any different? Where would the inf and sys files come from? Etc, etc, etc.

After a total of 4 days of research and forum reading/posting, I just decided to try a new HDD. I went to Circuit City, and bought a Seagate SATA 500gb , 7200rpm, 16mb cache. I installed it, and had Vista up & running in about 25 minutes. Maybe there was a defect in the Samsung, I don't know. I'm just glad to have this problem taken care of. I really appreciate everyone's help!

The Seagate working certainly points to some problem with the Samsung. With hindsight, could there be any mismatch between 3.0 and 1.5 Gig Speeds? Most modern SATA drives have a jumper to limit speeds to 1.5 if necessary and it is one issue that I have seen cause drives to not be fully recognised.

Samsung's Disk Manager (http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/support/utilities/Support_DiskManager.html)could also be worth a shot if you haven't already RMA'd the drive.