Can someone please help?? i've recently bought a maxtor serial ATA 200gb hard drive, ( along with other components to have a new pc built ) ..after it was built it was discovered the memory was faulty...this has now been changed...the bloke at the shop told me to re-install windows and gave me the instructions to do so. However, just before it starts to install it says there's no hard drive..i've checked the connections and everythings plugged in. Can anyone tell me what to do??...if so please contact me at davechemicalz@hotmail.com...with hard drive as subject so i don't delete thinking it's junk mail...any help would be GREATLY appreciated...

Cheers...

It sounds like the SATA HD is connected to a third-party motherboard controller, i.e., you need to do an F6 install. At the bottom of the screen, when you first start booting the install media for windows there should be a message that states:

"Press F6 to install a third party SCSI or RAID controller."

Do this even though you have a SATA controller, trust me as these are still considered SCSI controllers by Windows

Once you've pressed F6, look for a floppy disk that came with the motherboard that has the SATA device drivers on them. Once the screen asks for this option you'll press the 'S' key and insert the floppy disk into the drive.

I had the same problem when I bought my PC, I bought it part by part and built it up, first my Graphics card was faulty, then my Hard Drive was Faulty, then I could not install cause it needed a 3rd party driver and it only reads it of stiff, and these days you dont get drivers on stiffies no more, only CD's and I did not have a stiffy drive, so, I had to buy one and some blank stiffies, then I copied the files from the S-ATA folder of the CD to the stiffy and did the F6 3rd party driver install and all was fine.

Then I tried installing Linux and I had the same problem, but with a twist, I did not have a driver for Linux and I could not find one, so I updated my BIOS and that sorted the problem out, I never needed a stiffy again, no matter what.

No one will ever stop learning, everything changes to fast, especially in the IT field

I know what you mean, thats why I chose this field, all the other jobs I did was boring, it was the same thing over and over.

Like, imagine this, I worked at a very big company with +/- 400 PC's and about 500 users, and out of them I would say about 50 is experienced and we dont have problems with them, the rest, well, a diferent problem everyday, it keeps you on your toes.

And your worst fear is a user learning a little bit more about a PC and then they start playing around and breaks something, when you get there they lie and say it just stopped working and you have to look for the prob and fix it, but it would be so much easier if they told you what they did.

I know, you start building up a relationship with these people and becoming friends, then they start saying well, oops, I tried this and then this wont work anymore and so on. I dont mind helping people, I love it when they are happy once the problem is resolved, but now, well, I just sit at home and do nothing, cause I moved to Germany about 8 months ago to be with my wife and I still cant find a job, now I bother you all on this forum