Expert: Keith - 7/1/2009

Question
QUESTION: I have just put together my first computer. I cant get the operating system to load. Some of the problems are that it does not see the hard drive. I downloaded a SATA driver for NVEDIA but I cant get it to load from the floppy.The case is a Coller Master. The mother board is a MSI K9N2 SLI Platinum. The hard drive is a Seagate 500GB Serial ATA HD 7200/16MB/SATA-3G.The processor is a AMD Phenom 64 2.2 GHz Quad-Core.It has 8 Gigs of OCZ Performance DDR2 Memory.All this stuff should make a great machine but I am really in over my head and my wife is getting a little upset because Ispent quite a bit of money on it and it is not running yet.
Can you help me?
Thank you.
Jerry Horton
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ANSWER: First of all, what OS are you trying to load (XP, Vista)? You should make sure you do a total reformat if you can get it that far. Usually when installing an OS it asks if you have any special drivers to load and at this point you will click yes and install the drivers. Let me know what OS it is and we will go from there.

Keith

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Hi Keith:
Thank you for helping me.I am trying to install XP Pro 64 bit.
Thank you.
Jerry Horton

Answer
During the installation you are going to have to get to the point I said above and install the SATA drivers. I believe that is why it is not seeing the hard drive. I believe one of the XP service packs includes SATA drivers. What service pack is your version of XP (SP1, SP2, etc.)?

Go to this site, join, and ask the question in the XP 64 bit forum: http://www.tech-forums.net/pc/

I have limited experience with 64 bit OS's and these guys should be able to help us past this point. Once you get the OS installed or even past the point of seeing the hard drive I will be able to help more.

Keith