Installing SATA drivers to make it work

[TRDCorolla1]

My Gigabyte motherboard (the GA-K8NF-9, nForce4) has a SATA drivers on a CD that came with the motherboard bundled with other software on it (Direct X, Acrobat Reader, etc). Can I use this CD in my other CD-ROM while Windows is still installing (after I press F6 and put in the CD instead of a floppy for the SATA drivers)?

Also, during the 'Press F6" process of installing a third party utility for Windows XP, will it recognize the .exe file still, even though Windows hasn't been fully installed? I just downloaded a new updated driver for my Silicon Image SATA 3114 controller (It's a SATA RAID driver actually--this will work too right even though I may not be installing RAID soon?), and it is in .exe format.

 

[DarkBlade1]

Just install it after Windows is installed, it will just pop into the Windows area and replace them... My ASUS SLi allows for 3GB/sec transfer rates, not the Windows restricted 100MB/sec. I just installed the ASUS drivers, and Bang, super speed!!

 

[TRDCorolla1]

Now I regret it. I should've gone with the Asus board. Nobody in here get the Gigabyte motherboard.

So when you install it from scratch, Windows detected your SATA drivers automatically? Wow, did you have to change the boot sequence to SATA? I always though Windows needed a third party driver for SATA since it doesn't have it. I don't have SP1 on my Windows XP CD. It's one of the first Windows XP retail (expensive at the time). Do you think my motherboard will be plug and play with the SATA drive druing the Windows installation? I will change the boot order to boot from SATA drive instead of IDE.

 

[DarkBlade1]

NONONONO!! Gigabyte is great. What I am saying is, the disk that the drivers are on can be uploaded after Windows is installed. The CD will go in and replace most of the Windows drivers for you, you install it inside Windows XP. Who cares about SP2, that took me weeks to get working properly... Anyways, No just let Windows install, then Install the drivers inside windows or through Device manager. Easy as Pie.

 

[TRDCorolla1]

Oh. I hope this Gigabyte board will do it ok. The reason why I ask is because I used this same Windows XP CD (no SP1 or SP2 on it) to install Windows on the MSI nForce2 board (the one Im' using right now as I am typing this) which I know supports SATA (because it says on the box and in the manual), but it wouldn't recognize the SATA drive and aborted Windows install. I knew I had to install a third party SATA driver, which I didn't have. Well, it does come with one, but it was on a CD. I said, screw it. Went with an IDE instead. Had the SATA RMA back to Newegg.

So that was a bit strange on how that happened. It's making me think if I should go out and buy another Windows XP installation CD, this time with SP1 and hopefully have basic SATA support at least to install the OS on the SATA drive. Windows Longhorn better have SATA support or at least it should. Microsoft's got to get with the program and stop making those silly Media Center software or other non necessary applications and focus on compatiblity with current hardware issues.

Thanks for the advice...