Installing Windows XP With F6 AHCIRAID Drivers From USB Only. Sometimes installing Windows can be a truly challenging problem. For example, if you need to install Windows XP because its an old hardware uncapable of running something better, and you need to install operating system to the SATA HDD in AHCI mode or to the RAID controller with appropriate F6 floppy drivers, but you have neither CDDVD nor floppy drive available, just USB portsUsing the power of Flash. Boot, you can solve even this challenge. This article explains step by step, how to install Windows XP with builtin F6 floppy drivers for AHCIRAID disk using USB thumbdrive only. What is AHCIRAID drivers Who needs them Hard Disks HDD and Solid State Disks SSD are connected to the computer via controller. Modern disks have Serial ATA. SATA interface, old generation of disks had ATA. SATA controller can work in two modes ATA compatible mode i. ATA contoller to. AHCI mode new mode which enables all features of modern hardware. How to physically install, set jumper settings, and set up a Serial ATA, EIDE, or SSD drive in Windows. RAID Recovery for Windows Recover RAID0 and RAID0 hardware and software RAIDs Data Recovery Software, RAID Data Recovery. From the operating systems perspective, disk contoller operates either in ATA mode. ATA contollers new SATA controllers in ATA compatible mode or in AHCI mode. SATA controllers in AHCI mode. If you have SATA disk attached to disk controller in AHCI mode, you need special. Windows XP. If you are using ATA disk or your SATA contoller is in ATA compatible mode, then you dont. Windows XP already includes one. RAID driver is requred when you combine multiple disks into redundant array so if one of them. Likewise AHCI, operating system. Whats F6 floppy drivers for Windows XP installation How do they differ from normal Windows driversUsually Windows drivers can be installed when installation of the Windows itself is complete. This way works great for 3. D video card drivers, sound drivers, network drivers etc. But it doent work for disk drivers. Why The reason this way doesnt work for disk drivers is because Windows must have access. Temparary disability to use 3. D graphics. sound and network during Windows installation is acceptable, but disability to use. Windows installation effectively impossible. So, unlike other types of drivers, disk drivers must be installed not after Windows. But how Windows provides special mechanism for that purpose loading drivers during Windows Setup. Windows Setup had not yet loaded Windows Kernel, and operating in Text Mode. Whats why. these drivers are officially called Text Mode Drivers, but people usually search for. Google as F6 Floppy Drivers, so I prefer to call them that way. Back to the subject. How do there drivers differWhats special about Text Mode Drivers They are loaded into memory before Windows Kernel, so there are no USB drivers loaded yet. CD ROM drivers, no bus drivers, nothing at all. The only type of disks. BIOS disks. And BIOS by default provides access to HDD. FDD floppy disks. Nothing more. As a special exception, CDDVD and USB drives may be. Otherwise, only HDD. FDD are accessible. For that reason, Windows must load Text Mode Drivers from floppy. Everything else is. BIOS. 3. What should I do if I dont have floppy disk drive, but I must use F6 floppy drivers First of all, you can try to disable AHCI mode in your BIOS setup and turn your SATA. ATA compatible mode. Unfortunately, for some notebooks theres no. BIOS setup. Also, AHCI mode is modern, thus better than ATA in terms. NCQ and features for example, hotplugging. The rest of this article assumes that you have to install Windows XP on SATA disk. SATA controller configured in AHCI mode, or via RAID contoller. Because floppy does not exist, HDD is uninitialized, and everything else is just unavailable. Text Mode Setup under BIOS, the only way to go is to add AHCIRAID drivers to. Windows Installation CD itself. Windows already contains hundreeds of drivers for wide range of supported hardware, but not for. For example, Windows has builting support for ATA disk. So, all you need is just to add intergrate your particular driver to the long. How to integrate F6 AHCIRAID drivers into Windows XP installation disk ISO file Theres a special software for that purpose called n. Lite. n. Lite could be downloaded from. Step by step guide follows 1 Copy contents of your Windows XP Installation CD into the new folder and call it Win. XP. 2 Download F6 floppy drivers from website of your motherboard vendor, notebook vendor. Extract F6 floppy files from archive file to separate folder. If your vendor provides. EXE file only, which requires actual floppy. Virtual. Floppy Driver VFD, Windows XP 3. Virtual. Box or VMWare. Run NLite and choose Next 5 Choose Windows inputtemporary folder Win. XP in this example and click Next 6 Youll come to Presets. Ignore this screen by choosing Next one more time 7 In Task Selection screen, select Drivers and Bootable ISO by pressing. Then click Next 8 Choose Insert Single driver 9 Navigate to previously extracted floppy files step 3 and choose one of the files. You may see this screen if your INFSYS files are for multiple devices. Choose your device from the list. If your INFSYS files are for single device, you wont see this screen. Click Next to confirm the driver list 1. Say Yes in Do you want to start the process dialog. Wait for process completion. When it finishes, click Next 1. Set Mode to Create Image, then click Make ISO and choose where to save the. ISO file. Then wait for completion and click Next 1. This is a last page. Click Finish to exit wizard. How to install Windows XP from customized ISO file with F6 AHCIRAID drivers if I dont have DVD drive Use Flash. Boot to convert. ISO file into bootable USB thumbdrive. The process is explained in detail. Troubleshooting. If you have problems integrating SATAAHCI drivers into Windows XP, read this section. Q Which operating systems are supportedrecommendedA None of pre Windows 2. Windows 3. 1. 1, Windows 9. Windows ME. Windows 2. Intel drivers. Its recommended to use Windows XP 3. Windows Server. 2. Text Mode Drivers from the vendor of your. SATARAID controller. Q Do I need to tweak anything in BIOS setup A Yes, you need to enable AHCI mode for your SATA controller, or optionally enable RAID features. Sometimes BIOSes have shortage of low memory address space for all installed cards. BIOS setup to gain free space in low memory for ROM BIOS code of your RAID controller. Q Its still not detected. A Some motherboards have multiple SATA controllers. City State Zip Database Free Download. For example Intel X5. ASUS P6. T. has SATA controller in southbridge Intel ICH1. R and also JMicron JMB3. Please make sure youve attached your harddisks to the same controller. Consult your mainboard manual if you are unsure about that. Q n. Lite or Windows Setup is giving me some weird errors. A Please use clean, unmodified images of Microsoft Windows XP as input to n. Lite. Q Any other ideas why it might not work A1 BIOS bugs. Try to reflash your BIOS to the latest version. A2 Maybe you are intermixing 3. A3 Make sure your copy Windows XP has at least Service Pack 2 integrated. A4 The Power Management ACPI should be enabled in BIOS setup. Q I have troubles guessing correct answer on the step 1. A You can choose them all by holding Ctrl and clicking all of them one after another. Ctrl while scrolling. Windows Setup will find and install the.