Previously I’ve explained how to solve “Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer” when installing Windows XP. You will need to download a floppy SATA RAID driver, extract it to floppy disk and then when installing XP, you need to press F6 to install the RAID driver. However, newer desktop computers and laptops doesn’t come with floppy drive. It’d be a waste to buy an external USB floppy drive just to use to install Windows XP.

In order not to use floppy drive, you can integrate the floppy SATA RAID driver into Windows XP CD. This way, you can install Windows XP on a SATA hard drive without using floppy. You’ll need to have XP CD or the source files (i386) on your computer, the floppy SATA RAID driver which can be downloaded from the motherboard manufacturer’s website and a CD/DVD writer. Most new computers already comes with a CD writer. Here are the steps.

1. Download and install nLite

2. Download SATA driver from manufacturer website and extract it to a new folder. My motherboard is MSI, so I downloaded the SATA driver from MSI.
Download SATA RAID drivers

3. Run nLite and select the language that you want to display in nLite

4. Specify the Windows XP installation files. If there is a i386 folder at the root of your drive, most probably that can be used. If not, enter your XP CD and browse your disc drive letter. Click Next once done.
Locate Windows Installation Files

5. Click Next again when you’re at Presets.

6. At Task Selection, click Drivers and Bootable ISO. Click Next.
Nlite Task Selection

7. Now click Insert button, select “Multiple driver folder“, choose the folder with extracted drivers and click OK. Select the shown drivers to integrate. Do not select 64 bit drivers on a 32 bit Windows XP. Click OK when done selecting the drivers. Click Next.
Select shown drivers to integrate

8. You’ll need to choose the exact type of hardware and OS if listed. A few textmode integration options will be listed. You can check the manufacturer’s website to know which chipset is being used. Select the drivers and click OK and then click Next.
Storage device textmode driver

9. Click Yes when asked “Do you want to start the process?” The driver integration wouldn’t take more than a minute. Click Next when done.
Nlite sata driver integration

10. At the next screen you can create a bootable ISO to burn to CD/DVD, or you can even burn to CD directly using “Direct Burn”.

Congratulations! You now have a new Windows XP CD/DVD that contains SATA RAID drivers. Boot your laptop or desktop with the new XP CD and install as normal.

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