Hello everyone,can anyone help with this? I am attempting to install Windows XP Pro on a SATA hard drive but setup cannot ‘see’ the hard drive. Therefore I am attempting to manually install the drivers for the FastTrak 376 controller during the stage where it says ‘Hit F6 to install a RAID driver’. I downloaded the latest drivers from the ASUS website and put the required files on a floppy disk. When I provide the disk it comes up with a menu and I select the XP option. The problem is that I then get the following error message… File\WinXP\fasttx2k.sys caused an unexpected error (18) at line 2108 in d:\xpclient\base\boot\setup\oemdisk.c. I cannot proceed any further. Can anyone please assist me? My motherboard is an ASUS P4S8X. Many thanks Qcumber

My first question would be, "Why are you using the FastTrak controller when the motherboard you reference is capable of running a SATA drive without the contoller?". Secondly you should load the FastTrak drivers after the Windows installation. Is the controller showing in the device manager? If it is use the update drivers option and then direct the wizard to your WinXP drivers. The operating system installation doesn't like to be interrupted which is more than likely causing your error. Check out support for the P4S8X board for SATA installation.

Thanks for your reply Clarke. Yes i know the MB supports SATA but when i boot from the XP installation CD i get the error message "Setup was unable to find any hard disks installed in your computer...etc etc". I have looked through the P4S8X manual and have followed the instructions there but the MB still cannot see the HD.This is why i thought i had to use the FastTrak controller. Also even if the FastTrak contoller is enabled the XP setup program does not load a Promise driver which is why i need to provide the drivers manually (and hence my problem). If you know of a way to get the MB/XP setup program to recognise the SATA HD without using the FastTrak controller i'd be very gratefull if you could share that info with me. Lastly on the Asus website i could find no issues relating to the P4S8X and SATA (which probably means im the only person in the world who's going about it the wrong way)... Awaiting your reply dude.... Qcumber

Qcumber, I returned to the ASUS web page and discovered a quick way to access your board. In the search box (upper right corner) type in SATA and click search and you will be provided with a list of boards which have SATA capability. In reading the manual on your board it states that there is a PROMISE controller chip on the board which can be enabled/disabled in the bios setup (press delete at startup). You might want to insure that it's enabled. I'm not very familiar with SATA HD's but they do reference a special cable, but also say it will work in the normal IDE connector. This is your area of knowledge. Does a SATA drive require a different drive and power cable than a normal IDE HD? Sorry if this information doesn't help but if not contact ASUS. I've had real good responses to questions I sent them, even same day reply once. Good Luck, Clark

Clarke, Well i've got it sorted but it wasnt without a fight.It seems i was right in assuming that i had to provide the drivers manually so i downloaded them from Asus.The problem is that their instructions on creating the floppy disk are pretty vague.They just say "Copy the driver files to a floppy disk".They make no mention of the fact that you have to maintain the dir structure when you extract the drivers from the archive.This is why the installation process kept falling over. Yes a SATA drive does require a different cable as opposed to IDE but the power requirement is the same (on my Maxtor anyway). Thanks for all your help buddy. Qcumber.

Glad to be of inspirational help.

Hey sorry to bring this back up but I experienced the same problem. What I did the first time was to install the Win2000 drivers, because I could get the XP install to finish that way. Big mistake. It eventually caused my RAID to fail and me to lose everything. I am setting everything back up, but I am afraid of having the same problem again. Qcumber, when you say you need to keep the directory structure, what do you mean exactly? I downloaded the archive file to a floppy, then extracted the files right to the floppy. The only thing I can imagine is that you would remove the archive file from the floppy, and take all the files out of the folder that they are in. There is a directory structure contained within a single folder called Promise. Any help would be appreciated.