How can I install XP on a SATA drive without having a floppy drive for the driver?

I have tried using nLite and downloading the "AMD SATA RAID/SATA AHCI Driver (Preinstall driver, press F6 during Windows* setup to read from floppy)" from the motherboard website and it still wont "find any hard disk drives installed in your computer".

I have tried hitting F6 and going through that but it wont load the drivers that way either

Motherboard: Gigabyte ga-ma785gm-us2h (rev 3.3) Hard drive: Western Digital Caviar black

Solution 1:

If you wish to keep the functionality of AHCI (SATA) do not set it to IDE in the bios, instead use driver packs to slipstream "Mass storage" drivers into the XP CD.

Driver packs tutorial, read carefully.

http://forum.driverpacks.net/viewtopic.php?id=1449

Download software "Driverpacks Base"

http://driverpacks.net/downloads

You can install other driver packs besides the "Mass Storage", but this will bloat the size of the XP install to DVD size, The only driver packs I suggest to slipstream are

Mass Storage Chipset CPU

This will keep it a size to fit on a CD. If you want all the drivers slipstreamed it will require a DVD burner.

I don't change any of the default settings when using the software, just pick the driver packs you want to slipstream and create the ISO image.

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