Win 2003 setup can't detect Hard disk - AR71s, Any idea why ? Please help!

[chidanus]

Hi folks,

My Vaio AR71s came with Windows Vista but need to install Window 2003 server. Tried to run the 2003 set up but it said 'can't detect hard disk'. Thought it might be due to the RAID settings(it has 2 HDD on RAID-0). So disabled RAID and tried again but no joy 😞

Does anyone know what could be the issue? Do I need to load any custom driver or something like that? Please advice.

Thanks in advance.

cheers
dan

[Blencogo]

Hi Dan and welcome,

XP and Server 2003 do not support SATA hard drives without additional drivers.

You need to load the SATA/RAID drivers during install either by connecting a floppy drive and loading the drivers by pressing F6 at the first setup page or you need to make a slipstreamed disc which incorporates all the drivers onto a new installation CD.

Google for 'Install XP on a SATA drive' - http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-021701.htm
Google for nLite - http://www.nliteos.com/ and http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imst/sb/CS-020825.htm

[chidanus]

Hi Blencogo,

Thanks for the welcome and reply !

As it is a laptop, I don't think the floppy method is practical. Will try the bootable CD with diver option.

One follow up question: Where could I download the SATA driver files ? Sony hasn't provided any CDs... it may well be in the recovery partition but I don't know how to locate it.

cheers
dan

[Blencogo]

Hi Dan,

You will find the SATA/RAID driver on your AR71S in the directory C:\Drivers or C:\Windows\Drivers.

You can also download it. Download Intel SATA driver RAID from here: -

http://support.vaio.sony.co.uk/downloads/preinstalled/preinstalled.asp?site=voe_en_GB_cons&c=0&s=VGN...

I'm sure you know that Sony does not provide XP/Server03 Drivers and Utilities for the AR-Series so it is unlikely you will get everything to work properly. You may find this thread helpful: -

http://club.vaio.sony.co.uk/clubvaio/GB/en/forum/viewthread?thread=53196

[chidanus]

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for all your support, good news is that I managed to install 2003 server 64 bit along with Vista. To keep the loop closed, this what I had to.

Cheers
dan

Step1:
Download the 64bit driver. This proved to be the trickiest step though it sounds trivial. There are a million sites out there when you Google for driver. But the issue is that most of them only contain 32bit driver files.
The following site had the 64 bit driver for the Intel 82801HEM SATA RAID controller that comes on AT71s(my pride possession .. lol) http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/win/167594

Step2:
Download and install Nlite http://www.nliteos.com/download.html

Step3:
Create a bootable Windows2003 CD with the driver using Nlite
I used the pdf from the following link as reference. http://community.compuserve.com/n/docs/docDownload.aspx?webtag=ws-laptop&guid=2fdbb147-d10b-433e-b94...

Step4:
Install Windows 2003 using the newly created CD. Remember this can screw up your MBR a bit. After this, you can only log into 2003, so if you already had Vista, it is not accessible yet.

Step5:
In my case, the laptop already had Vista installed in it, so put the Recovery disk and did a windows start up recovery, to bring the MBR to factory settings. So you can log into vista but now 2003 not accessible anymore.

Step6
Install easyBCD http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1 and add the 2003 as well to the boot menu, job done. Can go into Vista or 2003.

Sweet !