I've done this with other hardware a bajillion times, with hiccups but never such a massive clusterwhopping headache as this time--I've spent almost all of yesterday on this, and half of today, and despite hours of trying different things and more hours of research on the web, have not found a final solution. I'm sure there *is* a solution, I just haven't run across it yet.
I've even done it with the same setup other than the "new" motherboard. The problem is the chipset on the board, vs drivers, vs XP Setup program.
Basically, what has to happen is that I have to use a clone of the drive off my burned-up machine from the housefire, run a repair-reinstall of XP onto it to fix the (normal) BSOD caused by it not having the storage device drivers already installed. This requires using the F6 option in setup to load additional drivers so that once it begins to run the Windows part of Setup it doesn't BSOD in Setup, too.
All that is good, and works exactly like it should, EXCEPT that once it reaches the part of Setup where you choose what drive to install or upgrade on, it doesn't SEE any drives other than the CD and the USB stick (used to get the F6 drivers loaded).
It doesn't matter if I set the BIOS to use the SATA as IDE (or any of it's other options), nor does it matter which SATA port each drive is hooked up to, nor does it matter if I use an actual IDE drive instead of SATA to hold the clone. (because the IDE on this board is part of the SATA chipset, not part of the main board chipset, most likely...even though the F6 drivers should be fixing that.
Keep in mind that it DOES see the CDROM drive it's installing from just fine, whether I use a SATA drive or an IDE, and regardless of which port it's on.
It ALSO sees the harddisks just fine if I try to boot from one, although of course it BSODs since it doesn't have the drivers for the storage devices/chipset yet.
It ALSO sees the harddisks just fine if I boot from either a CD or USB stick version of "minixp" like the Hiren's utility set, and I can read and write to any of the harddisks (this is how I made the clones).
It just doesn't see the harddisks (at all) during XP Setup from the CD.
Can't run the XP Setup from within the minixp either, cuz it only looks at the booted version of Windows to try to install to/upgrade from.
It also doesn't matter if I start with a blank drive rather than a clone, still can't see the harddisks to do an install to.
The only thing that I have thought of but not tried (because I don't have a big enough USB stick) is to clone just the Windows, Program Files (essential folders only), and Documents and Settings (essential folders only) folders to an otherwise blank USB drive, and then repair-reinstall THAT, and then copy those back over the top of the clone harddrive's folders.
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All that said, what I would PREFER to do is just dump in the necessary drivers directly into the clone drive, and then insert the necessary registry entries for these drivers to work.
Unfortunately I don't know which files and where they go, nor which entries or where or what they would contain. I have a good idea of where most of this stuff would go and what it would be, but don't have the details.
If I could get windows to install even on a blank drive, I could just copy all of the driver files over and merge the hardware sections of the registry in, but I can't even get the scratch install to start cuz XP Setup can't see the drives for whatever reason.
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It is NOT an option to use a newer OS; there's stuff I have to use that won't work on anything newer, in addition to other issues with that. I also HAVE to use this cloned setup, because otherwise I am looking at months (at minimum) of software installs and setups just to begin using the computer for it's intended purpose: music creation/editing.
Presently I have a clone of the old computer's drive running on a much older / slower system that simply can't do what I need to do (in fact I have at least two clones working, though only one is in use; the other is a backup cuz it's even slower). I know the process *can* work....but on this motherboard, I havent' found the right steps yet.
If it helps, the board itself is a Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 Rev 1.3
I've even done it with the same setup other than the "new" motherboard. The problem is the chipset on the board, vs drivers, vs XP Setup program.
Basically, what has to happen is that I have to use a clone of the drive off my burned-up machine from the housefire, run a repair-reinstall of XP onto it to fix the (normal) BSOD caused by it not having the storage device drivers already installed. This requires using the F6 option in setup to load additional drivers so that once it begins to run the Windows part of Setup it doesn't BSOD in Setup, too.
All that is good, and works exactly like it should, EXCEPT that once it reaches the part of Setup where you choose what drive to install or upgrade on, it doesn't SEE any drives other than the CD and the USB stick (used to get the F6 drivers loaded).
It doesn't matter if I set the BIOS to use the SATA as IDE (or any of it's other options), nor does it matter which SATA port each drive is hooked up to, nor does it matter if I use an actual IDE drive instead of SATA to hold the clone. (because the IDE on this board is part of the SATA chipset, not part of the main board chipset, most likely...even though the F6 drivers should be fixing that.
Keep in mind that it DOES see the CDROM drive it's installing from just fine, whether I use a SATA drive or an IDE, and regardless of which port it's on.
It ALSO sees the harddisks just fine if I try to boot from one, although of course it BSODs since it doesn't have the drivers for the storage devices/chipset yet.
It ALSO sees the harddisks just fine if I boot from either a CD or USB stick version of "minixp" like the Hiren's utility set, and I can read and write to any of the harddisks (this is how I made the clones).
It just doesn't see the harddisks (at all) during XP Setup from the CD.
Can't run the XP Setup from within the minixp either, cuz it only looks at the booted version of Windows to try to install to/upgrade from.
It also doesn't matter if I start with a blank drive rather than a clone, still can't see the harddisks to do an install to.
The only thing that I have thought of but not tried (because I don't have a big enough USB stick) is to clone just the Windows, Program Files (essential folders only), and Documents and Settings (essential folders only) folders to an otherwise blank USB drive, and then repair-reinstall THAT, and then copy those back over the top of the clone harddrive's folders.
*******************************************
All that said, what I would PREFER to do is just dump in the necessary drivers directly into the clone drive, and then insert the necessary registry entries for these drivers to work.
Unfortunately I don't know which files and where they go, nor which entries or where or what they would contain. I have a good idea of where most of this stuff would go and what it would be, but don't have the details.
If I could get windows to install even on a blank drive, I could just copy all of the driver files over and merge the hardware sections of the registry in, but I can't even get the scratch install to start cuz XP Setup can't see the drives for whatever reason.
****************************
It is NOT an option to use a newer OS; there's stuff I have to use that won't work on anything newer, in addition to other issues with that. I also HAVE to use this cloned setup, because otherwise I am looking at months (at minimum) of software installs and setups just to begin using the computer for it's intended purpose: music creation/editing.
Presently I have a clone of the old computer's drive running on a much older / slower system that simply can't do what I need to do (in fact I have at least two clones working, though only one is in use; the other is a backup cuz it's even slower). I know the process *can* work....but on this motherboard, I havent' found the right steps yet.
If it helps, the board itself is a Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 Rev 1.3
