BIOS Updates forum

Yes, I read other posts but none helped me.
I have an Elitegroup KM400-M2 MB and Maxtor 6L100MO 100GB SATA150 HD.
I bought this pc used and it had tons of crap on it I didnt want so I wiped it clean, thinking I could use my restore disk to reinstall the OS. First mistake! I had the COA for my Win XP, I just didn't have the OS disk.
So I enlisted the help of a friend of a friend......who works on pcs to reinstall the OS. Second mistake! At first, he told me the HD was bad, then good, then the Motherboard was bad, then he wasn't sure, then he gave up.
Now I have an OS XS disk, but can't get it to work.
I've never built a pc before so if it seems like I don't really know alot, its because I may not.
Anyway, I looked through the BIOS and could find anything that says anything about SATA.
When trying to put the OS on there, it eventually reaches the point where it says there isn't a hard drive and then I get the big blue screen.
Another friend brought over an IDE HD, plugged it in, and it all booted up perfectly using his IDE HD.
So, I think it has to be something simple but I can't find anything to work.
I looked in the BIOS, advanced, integrated peripherals sections and don't see anything about enabling SATA or anything about SATA at all.
When I hit "Tab" to go into the Raid Sata Bios, it clearly shows the HD but I can't navigate this utility, like it is frozen. The only thing I can do is exit the utility. If I unplug the Sata HD, it disappears from the list and then reappears when I plug it back in, so I know it is there!!!!
Help!
Thanks in advance for any suggestions. I guess I could go out and buy an IDE HD but I really hate to throw away good money.
By the way, the first pc person said he put this SATA HD in another pc and it worked fine. Further, it was working perfectly before I wiped it so I have no reason to think the HD is bad.
Also, I bought a new SATA cable and new power adapter for the SATA HD but nothing changed.
Thanks again for any suggestions!
Sincerely,
Ken

Use a regular XP disk and feed it a floppy disk with the SATA drivers for this board during the install in the F6 stage when it's asking for additional drivers.

It doesn't have a floppy. I have the original Motherboard CD and tried to do it that way, but I had to remove the XP CD and interrupt the process, so it didn't work. Can I use a usb flash drive and feed it that way?
Thanks again!

No you need a real floppy drive. Complain at Microsoft to have them find a better solution than this archaic ridiculous oldfashioned stuff.

OK, I borrowed a 3.5 floppy and ribbon cable, put it in and set it up in the BIOS. I d/l the driver from the manufacturer and put it on the floppy. Then hit F6 to install but got an error message that it couldnt find TXTSETUP.OEM. I looked at the floppy and that file was a subfile under the larger folder, so I just copied all the subfolders to the the main directory on the floppy.
Went through the process again and it recognized the SATA HD. Whoopie! It asked me if I wanted to use the old file system or install NTFS. I didn't know so I just used the default of use the old system. That didn't work so I went through it again, but this time selected NTFS and then it formatted the HD.
After that, it was just a simple install of the OS.
SUPER JOB EDWIN. I appreciate the help.
I pulled out the floppy, disabled it in the BIOS, and it all works great. I had to d/l a driver for my wireless card but it was a piece of cake.
Thanks again pal! I appreciate your assistance.
Sincerely,
Ken

You're welcome and thanks for the description of the steps you actually did have to take, I tend to leave out things when writing down the procedure because I've done this too many times...