Yes it is a SATA drive.

The raid drivers were installed originally but maybe corrupted?

I have the drivers on a floppy so where would they have to be copied to?

The XP CD needs those drivers in order to see the drive.

Everytime you use this CD for Recovery or Reinstall you need to load those drivers.

If the computer has a floppy drive then insert the floppy after the F6 prompt to load drivers.

OK

I'll have to send him the floppy with the raid drivers on then so will report back in a couple of days.
Why don't windows include SATA drivers in their OS's because it's just a pain to keep loading these drivers.

Also the raid drivers supplied with the latest m/b in the PC in question are too big to fit on a floppy so what would you do in this case? This doesn't affect me as I have the drivers on a floppy from a previous m/b disc.

XP was developed and released prior to SATA drives being invented.

Hence the XP CD does not know how to "see" this format (more precisely: this interface).

He can download the drivers himself from the web site.

Sometimes the driver package is larger than just the SATA drivers.

There is no way the drivers are over a 1.4MB floppy but you may need to break down the package.

What is the make and model of the motherboard?

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Also the Recovery Console should not have been affected by these drivers but only if you went to Repair Install.

That being said verify that the SATA drive is detected in the BIOS.



...

The m/b is an Asrock II945-10.

Are you saying that the drivers can be downloaded even though the PC is not working?

The drivers I have are the correct ones for the current m/b after all.

I was assuming he had access to another working computer.

OK got the SATA drivers loaded, get to the repair screen and starts repair.

Message comes up about checking out hard drive with figures starting on 0 for sectors etc but this does not change and nothing appears to be happening.

So as the drive appears to be recognised presumably the drivers are loaded ok.

Where to go from here?

What "Repair Screen"?

If you mean the "Recovery Console" it sounds like he tried to run "Check Disk"?

If it is the "Recovery Console" did he try FIXBOOT?

If he is trying a "Repair Install" which is completely different it should not run "Check Disk" unless perhaps there is a major hard drive problem.

If the latter who is the manufacturer of the hard drive? He can run the manufacturers diagnostic, again off another floppy, in order to test the hard drive.

Trying to run recovery or repair install causes a hang uop.

The drive is only a couple of months old - Hitachi Deskstar.

There are 2 SATA drives connected.
Can more than 2 SATA drives be connected and is the default drive (O/S) drive 0. I'm thinking of putting in another drive which has XP on and booting on that to retrieve some important data from the present O/S drive then formatting said drive and reinstalling XP.

You can have multiple hard drives.

There is no default.

The BIOS reads the ports: usually O;1;2;3;4;5;6;7;etc.

You must verify in the BIOS Setup that the "System" drive is the boot drive. This could be any number.

If you have continued problems disconnect the second drive.

XP needs to be installed on the motherboard that uses it. You cannot just move Operating System drives from computer to computer.

If you have needed data I'd suggest moving the problem drive into another working computer in order to extract the data.

Then put it back and run a Clean Install of XP.

You can also run the Hitachi diagnostic in order to verify the integrity of the drive in question:

Drive Fitness Test:

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm