Intel DP35DP and SATA?

Hi-

I'm trying to set up this mobo with a SATA boot drive. This requires installing the RAID drivers, which come on a floppy. Unfortunately, the DP35DP does not support a floppy drive.

Does anyone know how to overcome this problem? Should I just use IDE mode? I would prefer to be able to take advantage of the SATA features.

Thanks for any ideas.

Charley

Burn them on a disk, use a USB stick, or use the network to install those drivers.

You want to run SATA if you can, IDE is getting slowwww

ORIGINAL: KevinD

Burn them on a disk, use a USB stick, or use the network to install those drivers.

You want to run SATA if you can, IDE is getting slowwww

Thanks. Unfortunately none of these approaches work, for various reasons.

The only solutions I have found reported as working are to use a USB floppy drive- which may work or not, depending on the specific drive, or to install from an ISO image of the OS which includes the new drivers. THe former method seems to be a crap shoot, and the latter involves new software and a complex process which intimidates me.

I am considering giving up on XP and installing Vista.

I was able to install XP on a DP35DP last week, after a lot of frustration.

I figured out that I couldn't install XP from an IDE optical drive - blue screen from the point where XP is copying files, since there were no drivers for IDE drives of any kind. Intel wisely supplied a floppy disk for a motherboard which can't support a floppy drive. I read about the re-imaging and the USB stick.

Installing XP from a SATA optical drive did the trick. After installing the drivers from Intel's driver disk, I was able to re-integrate the PATA optical drive and all is well.

We decided to stick with the DG33FB for this and other reasons for near-term builds (these are for audio-related use, but not SONAR or any other DAW).

After experiencing this, and hearing a lot of trouble with P35-based motherboards and various PCI cards including UAD-1s, I'm glad I stuck with a Gigabyte GA965P-SA3 motherboard for my new Q6600 build for SONAR 7 and other audio tasks. I may have sacrificed a tiny bit of FSB speed for a mountain of stability (so-far).

Well, shoot. Had heard only good things about this board. I hadn't read of any issues with the UAD-1. I've also got an RME PCI card in the system and an IDE optical drive, so I guess I'm in for nothing but trouble.
I'm using a program called nLite to build an ISO image disk with the RAID drivers incorporated. If that doesn't work, I suppose I'll dump the board and try something else.

Thanks for the help,

Charley

This may be of interest to anyone experiencing similar difficulties.

I was able to load XP on a SATA drive in an Intel DP35DP based system using an IDE optical drive in the following fashion.

In the BIOS, I selected "RAID" as the drive mode, and selected the CD drive as the boot drive.

On another system, I copied the RAID files from the Intel RAID driver floppy disk to a different location.

Using the freeware program nLite, I made an ISO image of XP. During the process nLite prompts for location of drivers. It is only necessary to point to the file containing the complete contents of the RAID floppy disk; nLite takes the .inf files that it needs. The last stage of nLite is to burn the ISO image to a CD.

I then booted from the ISO image CD and XP loaded. When prompted, I partitioned and formatted the SATA drive. Windows then finished loading in the normal way.

Best of Luck.

After tearing out all of my hair trying to configure a DP35DP with SATA, I found this information from a link on Intel's site to a listing on Microsoft's site.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/916196/

It appears that there are only three floppy drives that are compatible with the XP installer-- all USB.

I have to really thank you for your post:

ORIGINAL: ccchhh

This may be of interest to anyone experiencing similar difficulties.

I was able to load XP on a SATA drive in an Intel DP35DP based system using an IDE optical drive in the following fashion.

In the BIOS, I selected "RAID" as the drive mode, and selected the CD drive as the boot drive.

On another system, I copied the RAID files from the Intel RAID driver floppy disk to a different location.

Using the freeware program nLite, I made an ISO image of XP. During the process nLite prompts for location of drivers. It is only necessary to point to the file containing the complete contents of the RAID floppy disk; nLite takes the .inf files that it needs. The last stage of nLite is to burn the ISO image to a CD.

I then booted from the ISO image CD and XP loaded. When prompted, I partitioned and formatted the SATA drive. Windows then finished loading in the normal way.

Best of Luck.

I created an ISO using nLite that included the necessary drivers for the DP35DP's SATA controller, and removed a bunch of the Windows crap that I didn't want or need. It worked perfectly, and reduced the Windows footprint significantly! So, thanks again for the great suggestion.

Hi,

I saw your post when researching how to build my PC with this board. I arrived at the nlite solution as well. But, what I am not sure of is the location of "SATA 0". Does it matter to which SATA (internal) connector I plug in my Hard Drive? I can't find that documentation anywhere.

Also, I'm not using RAID, I just want the SATA bus for my Hard Drives. From what I have found, all I need to do is enable "AHCI", which I think is the same as enabling RAID.

Anyway, any help you can give me on which SATA connector to use would be great.

thanks!
ramon
raz1313@grejfilms.com

ORIGINAL: ccchhh

This may be of interest to anyone experiencing similar difficulties.

I was able to load XP on a SATA drive in an Intel DP35DP based system using an IDE optical drive in the following fashion.

In the BIOS, I selected "RAID" as the drive mode, and selected the CD drive as the boot drive.

On another system, I copied the RAID files from the Intel RAID driver floppy disk to a different location.

Using the freeware program nLite, I made an ISO image of XP. During the process nLite prompts for location of drivers. It is only necessary to point to the file containing the complete contents of the RAID floppy disk; nLite takes the .inf files that it needs. The last stage of nLite is to burn the ISO image to a CD.

I then booted from the ISO image CD and XP loaded. When prompted, I partitioned and formatted the SATA drive. Windows then finished loading in the normal way.

Best of Luck.

ORIGINAL: raz1313

....But, what I am not sure of is the location of "SATA 0". Does it matter to which SATA (internal) connector I plug in my Hard Drive? I can't find that documentation anywhere.....

well, buy me some glasses!
I just saw the tiny writing on the mobo, identifying SATA-0, SATA-1,...

I'll post back once I install XP and all my other goodies.

-r

Use Nlite to slipstream the SATA drivers into a new Windows install CD.
It's a lot easier than it sounds...

I've been so stupid to throw out my floppy disk, so could one of you guys please give me the .inf files..

I am not understanding this either. XP understands SATA. You shouldn't need drivers to load XP on a SATA drive. If its an array then yes you will need drivers.

FWIW, In a few cases (including this one), you need to slip-stream the SATA drivers into the Windows install CD.
Quite painless thanks to Nlite...

You shouldn't have to load RAID drivers to use a SATA drive unless you want to use it as a RAID drive.

As for not having a floppy.... who uses those anymore? You could use a CD-R or a Flash drive or pull it from the web.

My problem is that I don't have the .inf file(s) and for that reason I can't finish the slipstream...

Do you have access to the Internet? I'm assuming you do if you're here.
Go to the Intel website and download the drivers.