Computer Repair Help

[SquirrelPants]

My hard drive recently crashed, so I went out and bought a new 1TB drive. I'm trying to reinstall Vista(I don't care about your opinion on how terrible it is, and I cannot afford Windows 7, so please do not even mention it), but it can't find any drivers. My dad also tried to install, with various different install discs, and the only compatible drivers we could find were the SATA/Raid drivers, but when we tried to install using that, a message popped up saying that it could find no new devices on either of the drivers we actually had access to.

After doing some sweeps around Google for drivers, I found nothing of any use to us. So...Do any of you know how to fix this problem? The new hard drive is a 1TB, 7200RPM drive and the motherboard is an ECS RS485M-M.

I'd really appreciate any help you can give, I don't want to have to bring this in to a computer shop for repairs.

 

[Me55enger]

Hm... Give me a minute...

 

[Laughing Man]

What are you trying to do exactly with the drive?

It sounds suscpiciously like you are trying to install Vista from within an active working version of Windows. In which case that is the direction for total fail. If however you wish to continue down this wrong path, the reason you can;t find the drive is not because of drivers or lack thereof but rather becuase the drive is totally unformatted, it is blank and thus Windows will not be able to find it in anywhere other than in the my computer option.

Right click on your my computer icon and select Manage then select Disk Management. This is the only place within Windows in which the new unformatted drive will appear. Find the new drive then right click and select create new simple volume. It will then ask you some info about drive letter and size of the volume.

If however you wish to reinstall a clean new Vista on to the new drive then unplug the old drive and plug the new drive in in its place. Stick the Vista install disc in the drive, boot the computer and enter the bios. Make sure that the CD or DVD drive that the Vista disc is in is the primary boot drive. Reboot the computer and the Vista install disc will guide you through the rest of the install including formatting the new disc.

 

[SquirrelPants]

What are you trying to do exactly with the drive?

It sounds suscpiciously like you are trying to install Vista from within an active working version of Windows. In which case that is the direction for total fail. If however you wish to continue down this wrong path, the reason you can;t find the drive is not because of drivers or lack thereof but rather becuase the drive is totally unformatted, it is blank and thus Windows will not be able to find it in anywhere other than in the my computer option.

Right click on your my computer icon and select Manage then select Disk Management. This is the only place within Windows in which the new unformatted drive will appear. Find the new drive then right click and select create new simple volume. It will then ask you some info about drive letter and size of the volume.

If however you wish to reinstall a clean new Vista on to the new drive then unplug the old drive and plug the new drive in in its place. Stick the Vista install disc in the drive, boot the computer and enter the bios. Make sure that the CD or DVD drive that the Vista disc is in is the primary boot drive. Reboot the computer and the Vista install disc will guide you through the rest of the install including formatting the new disc.

Oh no that is not at all my problem! My old hard drive is dead, and I have a new, completely blank drive. I already know how to get to the install, but the first step of installing Windows involves finding the drivers to install to. Or something. It's really not very specific about what it's looking for, but I'm stuck at the very first step of the install, part of the "gathering information" part.

 

[verindae]

Firstly you don't need HDD drivers for a windows vista install unless you're trying to set up a RAID array, in which case you need the drivers for the raid card, not the hard drives. Seems to me like you're sitting in the section which asks for RAID drivers, which is a place you don't need to be in (this may be an automatic step in the vista install, I can't remember off hand). As far as I can remember no version of windows has ever needed drivers to find a hard drive.

As long as the drive registers as there in your BIOS you can ignore that bit and go straight to the setup, easy.

Been a while since I did a vista install but as far as I can remember it's a simple point and click affair. If you use the custom option you'll have to set a partition on the blank drive more than likely but other than that it's easy going.

 

[Tharwen]

Where are you installing Vista from? I mean, are you using a different hard drive running a different operating system, or just using the BIOS to install it?

If you're just installing off the disk in the BIOS, make sure you choose a formatting option for the drive when it asks you if you want to choose one.

[sub]I wrote this assuming you don't know much about operating systems and drives. While this may not be the case, its best to make that assumption when giving advice so don't be offended.[/sub]