Well, first, here are my specs:

Gigabyte GA-K8N-SLI nForce4 Athlon 64(FX)/64 X2 Dual-Core Skt939 DDR ATX Motherboard w/Audio, Gigabit LAN, RAID/Serial ATA Retail

Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 6Y160M0 160GB Serial ATA 7200RPM Hard Drive w/8MB Buffer

I have all the documentation for the motherboard, but the hd came bare. I have the drivers on a cd from my motherboard for a sata hd. I just finished building a new comp and am currently installing windows xp onto the hd. I press f6 and then s, and tells me to insert the disk labelled manufacturer-supplied hardware support disk into drive A. So I insert the floppy I created with the drivers for it and then press enter. It says please wait and then give me the same screen.

My motherboard documentation states that i can also load the drivers through dos mode. So I created a start up disk and put it in, told bios to boot from floppy first and saved it, but it still goes straight to boot from cd.

I even tried to install windows 98 to get the drivers onto the hd through win 98 dos. But I still cannot get into dos mode on either 98 or xp.

Is there another way that i can get into dos through bios or something, for I cannot install xp until I get the drivers for the hd.

Any help would be greatly appreciated and I thank you for your time.

If you are just installing one SATA drive the F6 step is most likely not necessary.

This is generally for a SATA/RAID installation.

Otherwise there are some details here from Gigabyte:

http://america.giga-byte.com/MotherB...ultrasli_e.pdf

http://america.giga-byte.com/MotherB..._k8nusli_e.pdf

Thank you. The first manual is just what I need.

Although, I run into a problem at #2, step 2. My bios is showing only bootable add in cards. It has no other options.

My first thought was to update the bios, so I went to http://www.giga-byte.com/Motherboard...N-SLI_More.htm, downloaded the latest version, saved it to a floppy, then quick flashed the bios and went to update it, but it always says access floppy disk error.

Not exactly too sure on what to do, I tried switching to a different floppy drive, same error.

Do I even need to update my bios?
How do I get more options in the hard disk boot priority menu?

Again, your help is greatly appreciated and I thank you for your time, and now your patience.

The only change I see in that BIOS version is:

1. Update CPU code

2. NVIDIA RAID mode default from enable to disable

3. If your system already use RAID mode , please enable relative settings in bios first

What I am sensing is that your BIOS is not detecting the SATA drive.

Are you sure that you're connected to the correct port?

I don't see definitive data but would suggest SATA_0

Page 70 of the full manual also has the section: (although at first glance it appears to apply to SATA/RAID configuration rather than a single SATA drive)

4-1-4 Serial ATA BIOS Setting Utility Introduction

http://america.giga-byte.com/MotherB..._k8nusli_e.pdf