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I just got a new Gateway MP8708 laptop. It comes with windows media center, which my audio hardware will definitely not be compatible with. So I tried to put in XP Pro just like all my other machines. After it loads and I press enter to set up XP now the same screen comes up: Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer. The hard drive works with the current install so I dont know why setup cannot detect it, and after I reformatted the drive with a disk utility and started fresh the same thing happened when i tried to install XP Pro again. I tried other operating systems, same thing. When i did a restore however with the gateway restore DVD that worked, putting xp media center right back GRR How are they able to lock out other OS's? What am I doing wrong? Thanks for any and all help, and please dont tell me that i should keep media center cause its better blah blah, I cannot use it because my audio hardware DEFINITELY does not support it. Thanks again!
"It comes with windows media center, which my audio hardware will definitely not be compatible with. "
You probably DO NOT have to load another version of XP.
If the audio hardware does not have MCE compatible drivers, it will still work, the same way it works in other XP versions. It just won't be detected as compatible in the Media Center application itself, and you can't use the special audio features in the Media Center application itself.
Windows MCE is the same as XP Pro with a few features removed that most people don't use, and with added software that supports MCE, more multimedia, and the Media Center application itself.
If you don't see specific drivers for MCE for a device, you can use drivers for XP or XP Pro and they will work fine - the device just won't work or won't fully be supported in the Media Center application itself.In other words, there is probably NO NEED to load XP Pro to support your audio hardware! Try the regular XP or XP Pro drivers!!
"So I tried to put in XP Pro just like all my other machines. After it loads and I press enter to set up XP now the same screen comes up: Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer. "
You have a SATA hard drive, and only a SATA hard drive. XP of any version does not have the drivers for almost all SATA hard drive controllers built into it. Because of that, your SATA hard drive is not seen when you run Setup.
When you run Windows Setup from the CD, you must load the drivers for the SATA hard drive controller near the beginning of Setup, when you see "Press F6 to load SCSI or hard drive controller drivers" or similar.
If you have a brand name system, the SATA drivers have already been installed in the software that came with the system, can be re-installed by using the Recovery procedures for that computer, and may also be available on the manufacturers web site in the downloads for your model.
If you don't see the SATA controller drivers on the brand name system manufacturers web site in the downloads for your model, you would need to determine what brand and model of SATA controller you have from the specs for your model, and find the drivers for it, and, extract them if necessary, and put them on a floppy, or onto a burned CD (most USB connected floppy drives are not detected during Setup, and a USB flash drive will probably not be detected during Setup at that early point in Setup).
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Thanks for your help, got the same answer on another forum and the external USB floppy worked. The audio thing is true however, all M-Audio interfaces are not compatible with Windows Media Center... www.m-audio.com
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I knew i shouldnt have posted that last reply so quick =( Ok the new problem is after I use the SATA drivers from gateway [by the way i had to use a different option than the one mentioned in gateways notes- they said to choose "Intel(R) 82801GH I/O controller Hub (ICH7DH)" as the driver to load, but that exact listing was not a choice, the only one that works is the "Intel 82801GBM SATA AHCI controller (mobile ICH7M)] NOW after the drive format it asks me for the Intel® Matrix Storage Manager, which looks like it is for RAID (which i dont have- so i donno why it needs it). Without it it cannot proceed with the install any further. Now at the point where it asks for the first SATA driver I have an option to load other drivers, but when i downloaded the Intel® Matrix Storage Manager thing it was too big to fit on the floppy, and is an .exe file that has to be launched in an OS anyway!!!! This is beyond frustrating, any advice you guys have would be awesome! Thanks! (Oh its m-audio by the way for the audio hardware)
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Ok i got windows to load after specifying the mobile sata driver and the desktop RAID driver, and it loaded and rebooted, now i get a blue scrren that flashes up and the computer restarts before i can read it, something about checking my HD for viruses or something.... Im so mad i got this far only to get this BS... any suggestions?:lol
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"Oh its m-audio by the way for the audio hardware"
What model, I ask for the second time?
I still think unless proven otherwise that you DO NOT have to use XP Pro. There not being specific MCE drivers for a device usually DOES NOT mean it won't work in MCE.
....As for as your other problem, I researched the SATA drivers for ICH6R just the other day, and I think I can help.
Most bioses on mboards that have SATA onboard have at least two of 3 choices as to the mode the SATA is seen in - IDE mode, which emulates parallel IDE, SATA mode, or AHCI mode. If you set it to use AHCI mode the SATA drive must support it - not all SATA drives do.If you set it to use AHCI mode, you need to load the ICH7xxx AHCI drivers for it, plus you must load the Intel® Matrix Storage Manager after that. Obviously if it won't fit on a floppy, you have to put it on a burnable CD, preferably a CD-R for best compatibilty.
However, if you set the bios to SATA mode, you don't need to load the Intel® Matrix Storage Manager after you load the ICH7xxx SATA drivers.
But NOTE that the two modes use different drivers:
ICH7xxx AHCI
ICH7xxx SATAI'll see what else I can dig up.
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Gateway MP8708
they said to choose "Intel(R) 82801GH I/O controller Hub (ICH7DH)"
.....Intel site.
Downloads for 945 chipset family for XP Pro
http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scr...
Last download on first page -Floppy Configuration Utility - Intel Matrix Storage Manager
Creates floppy disk for 32-bit OS with Intel® Matrix Storage Manager 6.2.0.2002 files - used to preinstall RAID driver (F6 during Windows* setup)This utility will create a floppy disk containing the RAID driver files for installation on a 32-bit operating system. This floppy can be used to pre-install the Intel Matrix Storage Manager driver during the F6 portion of Windows* setup.
(it has both the drivers and minimal info needed for Intel Matrix Storage Manager!!!)
....First 3 downloads -
1. RAID/AHCI Software - Intel Matrix Storage Manager (newest)
This is the full version, 5.235mb
Readme - see for full info
- says it supports Intel(R) 82801GH I/O controller Hub ICH7DHI have no idea whether you can install that after Setup has finished - presumably you can.
..These two you can install after Setup has finished:
2. Graphics driver for onboard video (newest).
If you have already installed a Graphics driver, Un-install it in Add and Remove programs before you install this one!3. INF Update Utility .exe version (newest)
This utility installs INF files that inform the operating system how to properly configure the chipset for specific functionality such as USB and AGP.
.....NOTE that if the SATA support in the chipset supports RAID, you may have no choice but to install RAID drivers.
However, you do not necessarily have to setup or use RAID, and in your case you have only 1 drive so you can't use it anyway.
.......Gateway MP8708 support
http://support.gateway.com/s/Mobile...No accesible from that page - tells you how to restore them after the system software has already been loaded!
Chipset Intel® 945GM
Video Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950 (integrated)
Modem 56K ITU V.92 ready Fax/Modem
Network Integrated Intel® PRO/Wireless 3945ABG (802.11a/b/g)
Integrated 10/100 Ethernet
Audio High Definition 2 Channel audio
....All software downloads for MP8708
http://support.gateway.com/support/...Gateway Notebook Computer Intel SATA Support Driver Version: 5.5.0.1035
File Size: 18,103 KB !!!
I looked at the Readme file - This is crazy! They want you to download an 18mb file into Windows, then use a tiny piece of it to make a floppy to use for Setup when you press F6!!! FORGET IT!
http://support.gateway.com/support/...The rest of the drivers and utilities are okay, but the Intel utilities are older than the ones from the Intel site above.
***********************************************************************
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Oops...
All software downloads for MP8708
http://support.gateway.com/support/...
No DRIVERS or SOFTWARE accessible from that page - tells you how to restore them after the system software has already been loaded!
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Oops again...
Gateway MP8708 support
http://support.gateway.com/s/Mobile...
No DRIVERS or SOFTWARE accesible from that page - tells you how to restore them after the system software has already been loaded!
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"I still think unless proven otherwise that you DO NOT have to use XP Pro. There not being specific MCE drivers for a device usually DOES NOT mean it won't work in MCE."
From the m-audio website:
System Requirements:
Pentium III 500 MHz w/ 128MB RAM
Windows 2000 (SP4) / XP (SP1 or higher)*
DirectX 8.1 or higher
6-pin FireWire port or adapter
* Home and Professional Edition only. Windows Media Center Edition is not currently supported.This goes for all their products.
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That's typical. All that means is they don't have specific drivers for MCE - normal XP drivers will probably work fine for them in MCE. I does NOT say the XP drivers are incompatible when used in MCE.
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I know of 2 people who have MCE. One of them is on an older computer that has some devices and an old printer that don't have specific MCE drivers - they all work fine in MCE with regular XP drivers. The other is a newer computer only a few years old that has an older network card and had a TV card and a printer that don't have specific MCE drivers - they all work fine with regular XP drivers.
MCE is not that much different - the operating system itself is essentially the same as XP Pro.
If there was a problem with devices that don't have specific MCE drivers not working with at least normal XP drivers in MCE, we would be hearing about that all the time on this site - we are not.
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Ok, I had this exact same issue with loading XP Pro on a very similar model, the MX6956, bought from Best Buy, the specs are nearly identical to the model everyone is talking about.
I GOT IT TO WORK!!! It kept asking for the Intel Matrix driver thing, and even tried as mentioned above with using the Desktop RAID driver, which also Blue Screened after restarting. I assume because there is a difference with the 945 express chipset mobile and desktop. (which makes sense).
One thing I did notice, is that when looking for the Intel Matrix driver from an external floppy drive, it access light never even lit up like it was attempting to look for it.
I went through the BIOS with a fine tooth comb, and nothing...about to give up at this point, and go back to MCE, and use a registry hack to allow connection to a domain, and maybe by force of habit, or purely by chance, I LOADED SETUP DEFAULTS before I exited the BIOS and figured, why not try one more time. Low and behold, IT WORKED!!!
I honestly do not know if it would have switched it back into NATIVE mode, or what it may have done. OEMs tend to hide some settings from the user, especially ones that will cause "their" recovery discs to NOT install properly.
I am guessing it may have disabled RAID that was possibly a hidden setting. (which may even be toggled by some keystroke only gateway/emachines is aware of. If it didn't disable RAID, then it may have just changed the SATA mode to native, or something similar.
Why would Gateway do this you ask? To cut corners, I don't think they thought about the possible consequences such as these. After working as a retail store computer technician for the better part of a decade now, I know all about how manufacturer's like to make stuff easy for them, but difficult for the consumer as a result.
My guess or assumption about this one, is that I have noticed that ALL Gateway Laptops and Desktop for the last 6-8 months have all come with the exact same recovery DVD. It seems to me like they made a universal recovery disc that has RAID drivers included, and that's why RAID was enabled out of the box. Some laptops may have 2 drive bays, and the ability to configure RAID, and the same with some of their desktops. Well, the corner they cut was just enabling it on all models to the recovery disc would work properly with any model. If I am wrong about this, and someone else knows something that I don't please fill me in. And if this doesn't fix your problem with that model, I am sorry for letdown, I just wanted to share my solution.
Last minute thought, since your model is a month or two older then the MX6956, you may want to check Gateway's support site for a BIOS update, that may allow the same solution to work for yours. Before you get your hopes up about a BIOS update from Gateway, check their site. They DO NOT have the best support site by a very long shot. Just in the past week, I have encountered several problems with their laptops that a BIOS update would be needed to fix. And maybe you will have better luck but contacting them is pretty much a waste of time, they always say "We only support the OS that was shipped with the unit" and "Only update your BIOS if you are having 'hardware problems" (??) [EDIT: I just looked, no BIOS updates yet]
Best Of Luck, I hope this helps someone...
~Jack
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GreeNova - Jack - Obviously hokus has not replied further to this topic thread since Nov. 19 - I doubt he will see your post.
"I LOADED SETUP DEFAULTS before I exited the BIOS and figured, why not try one more time. Low and behold, IT WORKED!!!"
See response 6. The bios Setup defaults probably reset the bios setting to SATA mode.
As for your Gateway related comments you're probably assuming too much.
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