Clean motherboard/hdd/windows 7

Jared48 · 05 Jan 2010

So i've been browsing around on this forum for 70 minutes and I'm still at a loss with my current issues.

While fresh installing windows 7 on a brand new custom machine i get an issue while installing w7 32bit. "cant locate drivers to install windows 7

I dont know how to update any of my drivers after installing a new motherboard ect..

It also doesnt detect my HDD in the BIOS :O (i have SATA plugins to the board, not an extra device)

AMD ATHLON X2 3.0ghz dual core
gigabyte M23L-S3P
HITACHI 500gb SATAHDD
4gb DDR2-667
evga 9600gt

I dont really know what else to describe, if you need more information - ill be more then happy to throw it down.

I'll attempt to put up some pics of bios/ windows 7 installation

**Pauly** · 05 Jan 2010

Hi Jared, welcome to SF

Dont even bother installing win 7 until you get your bios to recognise your HDD, if mobo does not detect HDD then win7 has nothing to install to

Have you been in bios and checked your settings for the drive, normally listed under devices or peripherals i think
Check settings and reboot until you see your HDD listed in the bios/post screen

Does the drive have power, is the power and sata lead connected properly, can you hear the drive spinning up?

If its a new build i always connect internal speaker to mobo so if you have a serious fault ie something not connected properly or a short circuit etc the speaker will beep at you to let you know

Hope this helps

Post back your results

raf051888 · 05 Jan 2010

One more thing to keep in mind. Windows 7 32-bit, won't use all 4gb of your ram.

Jared48 · 06 Jan 2010

Alrighty! so i spent all morning tryin to figure it out once again -

when connected the HDD does work, i can hear and feel it spin up -
no matter what i do - it still wont get recognized :/

so i changed it up - i found my older WD500g caviar blue hd, and connected it as a slave to my DVD drive

(the motherboard only has 1 ide port)

and bios detected it right away and decided to put windows xp pro instead of 7.

so now im at a new confusion - i still want to use my SATA HDD and i still want to use windows 64 bit (thanks to the correction about 32 bit)

is there a way to make it all work? :O

**Pauly** · 06 Jan 2010

I take it from your post that your sata HDD is still not showing in bios
if its spinning up then we know the power is connected, have you checked sata lead, make sure both ends are in ok, unplug and reconnect to be sure, try different sata ports on MB

Check what type you have it set to in bios options are normally
IDE - RAID - AHCI
change this and see if you can get the drive to show
sorry im not familiar with your bios, maybe one of the others will chip in who are used to your brand of MB and bios

just to be clear you should be looking for your drive in the bios menu that shows drives connected to your MB, cd/dvd/hdd list

Also there is always the possibility the drive is knackered

Saltgrass · 06 Jan 2010

You say it is a custom machine, did you build it?

Does the motherboard have more than one SATA controller, and do you have the drive plugged into SATA 0?

Do you need to enable the SATA in the bios?

Is this a brand new hard drive or has it been wiped prior to this install.