Can't install windows 7 "No drives found"

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jdraughn

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 9, 2007
Messages
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I'm trying to install windows 7 but it will not find my hard drive. (500GB Western Digital SATA). I know the obvious solution is to point it to the sata drivers, but this is windows 7 with built in generic sata drivers, and besides, I have installed windows 7 using motherboard many times before.

If I browse for drivers after getting the "No drives found" message, I can browse the hard drive itself! WTF?

I have installed windows on this drive before without needing sata drivers. I havin't needed sata drivers since my very first sata drive years ago.

I have a feeling I need to do some kind of fdisk command. I did put the drive in my other computer and formatted it in windows using NTFS. I also reset the bios and also tried numerous hard drive settings under raid management ect... I have been building systems since the Cyrix and Windows 3.1 days, and I did tech support for Microsoft Millennium - I know what i'm doing.

Maybe there is something I can do in disk management?

Any ideas? I am building this system for a friend and it's been fighting me EVERY step of the way. Maybe my motherboard (XFX socket 775) is mad at me for selling it after it has served me for so many faithful years?
 
Try setting your Harddrive controller to IDE/Compatibility mode in the BIOS. That seems to fix a lot of issues in general when it comes to SATA drives and Windows.
 
i had to plug in the molex power connector on my hdd the other day to avoid this error. not sayin, im just sayin.
 
Lebowski said:
^^^ This
Change from AHCI to Compatibility mode
Click to expand...

I don't have a "Compatability mode" option. I have IDE, AHCI, LINUX AHCI, and RAID. I have tried both IDE and AHCI mode.

And yes, the drive is plugged into power, I am able to browse the drive (although now it's empty) within the windows 7 setup utility.

I read all these suggestions through google already. The one thing I have NOT done was start the install with a different computer then when it reaches a certain point remove the drive and insert it back into the intended system and continue with windows setup.
 
jdraughn said:
I read all these suggestions through google already. The one thing I have NOT done was start the install with a different computer then when it reaches a certain point remove the drive and insert it back into the intended system and continue with windows setup.
Click to expand...

good luck with that, i wouldnt do it.
 
Is this a SATA DVD drive? I've had this problem before, and it was actually looking for SATA drivers for the CD drive, not the hard drive.
 
OPUS1 said:
Dude your MB is looking for the raid/scssi drv
Click to expand...

The only drives I have hooked up right now are the IDE DVD/RW and the 500GB SATA drive. There is no raid going on. The 500GB drive may have at one time been part of a raid 0 array, but I have succesfully used it since then to store files on just itself (no raid), but probably not as a boot device.
 
Standpoint said:
Is this a SATA DVD drive? I've had this problem before, and it was actually looking for SATA drivers for the CD drive, not the hard drive.
Click to expand...

This, after being hit with this issues for shits and giggles I installed W7 from a virtual drive in vista instead. As all files are copied during the initial setup before the reboot so you can just mount the iso and install from there.
 
I put the drive in my media center pc, went into disk management and deleted the partition and created a new simple volume and that fixed my problem. I imagine it had something to do with security permissions. A previous windows installation "owned" it so this windows install wouldin't use it. That kind of thing has bitten me in the ass more times then I care to think about.
 
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