Problem Finding Driver

bobkn · 28 Mar 2010

I'd say RTFM (read the frickin' manual), but I see that the Gigabyte manual is pretty weak on SATA drivers.

What mode is the board's SATA controller set to? If it's native IDE, I doubt that you'd need any additional drivers. Win7 includes AHCI drivers that will support some motherboards, but I wouldn't be surprised if newer AMD chipsets are not supported. I didn't need to do this on my desktop system (Intel X58 chipset); I forget whether it was required on my notebook (nVidia chipset), although it probably was.

At the risk of stating the obvious: the AHCI and RAID drivers for download from the link that you posted are self-extracting archives. You need to run the .exes to expand the archives into the directory of your choice. (They default to the directory where you run the .exe. Fortunately, they extract into folders.) The files are what you need to copy onto the USB key drive for use during the Win7 installation.

Please stop posting like a fifteen year old, even if you happen to be one. You'd probably get more, or better, help.

Snub · 28 Mar 2010

I was only posting like a 15year old because I was getting pretty irritated with the lack of information on my problem from here and everywhere else I could find.

I did extract the files and made sure they were all properly extracted.

Another problem that cropped up was when I changed the HDD from Native IDE to AHCI it wouldn't boot from a CD anymore (same thing happens if I set it to RAID). So I'm in the process of making a bootable USB to see if that will help.

bobkn · 28 Mar 2010

I apologize for being irritated by your irritation.

Out of curiosity, I visited the Windows 7 compatibility pages. Your motherboard isn't listed.

Windows 7 Compatibility: Software Programs and Hardware Devices: Find Updates, Drivers, and Downloads

However, the ASUS M3A78 is listed, with the same AMD chipset. It's listed as compatible with both 32 and 64 bit versions of Win7, with "no action required". No drivers other than those included with Win7 should be needed to do a complete install.

(Now that I think about it, I was able to install Win7 on my laptop without requiring additional drivers. However, I needed to install the nVidia chipset drivers later to get some devices working. They weren't required for the initial install.)

Is the Win7 install DVD simply unable to detect the HD you wish to install onto, or are you getting some sort of error message?

Not being able to boot from the DVD in AHCI mode is worrisome. Maybe preparing a bootable USB key drive will help you. I'd recommend it; it's how I installed the RTM version of Win7 onto both of my machines. It's considerably faster than the DVD.

Snub · 29 Mar 2010

I tried that, I wasn't able to boot from the USB, although that may simply be choosing the wrong USB boot option.

As for compatability with Windows7, their web page says that it works, from here:
GA-MA770T-UD3 (rev. 1.0) - GIGABYTE - Support&Download - Motherboard - CPU Support List
(Point12 on the list)

Unable to detect the HDD, no errors.

FZ21Z · 29 Mar 2010

Snub said:

I put both the SATA RAID and Chipset SATA drivers onto a USB pen, neither work.

Snub said:

I tried that, I wasn't able to boot from the USB, although that may simply be choosing the wrong USB boot option.

Can you explain what you meant by "neither work"?

Snub · 30 Mar 2010

After booting from the Windows7 CD, I put the drivers from the website onto a USB pen, there were 2 different ones, neither worked.

This is a different USB pen to the one I attempted to boot from.

Snub · 31 Mar 2010

Problem resolved:
The Samsung drive is incompatible with the Gigabyte motherboard.
Tested the HDD on another PC, worked fine.
Tested a second HDD on the gigabyte board and it worked fine.