Fatal1ty X79 Professional - Problems Installing Windows 7

[tgurus]

Hello-- apologies if there is a thread on this... can't get search tool to work worth a dingus here... "windows" and "x79" come up with 0 results, for instance...

Anyway, having a heck of a time trying to install Win7 on this motherboard... managed to get the BIOS upgraded for Ivy-Bridge, and used DISKPART to make sure one of my SSD drives was formatted and active, healthy, etc

Keep getting this error: "A required CD/DVD device driver is missing." ... this was prior to even having the CD/DVD connected however.

Have tried all the drivers in the INF package that comes with the Ivy-Bridge update as well as drivers from the CD that came with the motherboard and SATA drivers I downloaded from ASRock... assuming this has got to be a driver for the Marvel or Intel onboard SATA (or corresponding RAID driver - not using RAID atm tho) ... in general I get a "No new devices could be found." error after trying to install any of these that windows sees as valid for my hardware...

Any ideas as to exactly which driver it might be looking for?

UPDATE: have tried disabling either Intel and Marvel SATA controllers in BIOS to no avail, also tried IDE mode .. always get the error

[Tyler.Bernath]

Re: Fatal1ty X79 Professional - Problems Installing Windows 7

Installing from a Windows DVD or USB? If USB try using a USB 2.0 port.

[parsec]

Re: Fatal1ty X79 Professional - Problems Installing Windows 7

Installing from a Windows DVD or USB? If USB try using a USB 2.0 port.

I agree, and use one on the board's I/O panel to be extra safe.

It's best to use the Intel SATA ports (SATA III ports for a SSD) for installing (and running) an OS, they are the red SATA ports, the top two should be SATA III.

The Intel SATA drivers, either RSTe or IRST are both AHCI and RAID drivers, and are usually preferred to the standard Windows msahci AHCI driver.

If you changed your BIOS to 2.60, you should be able to use the IRST driver, instead of the standard (for X79 boards) RSTe driver. The former provides better performance. There should be a BIOS setting to choose IRST or RSTe. You can change that after the OS installation, if you care.

If you are stuck using RSTe for the OS installation, the "F6" driver you need to use is: SATA Floppy Image (RSTe) ver:3.5.0.1101, from your board's download page.

Always use AHCI mode, for SSDs and HDDs.

[odiebugs]

Re: Fatal1ty X79 Professional - Problems Installing Windows 7

Just wanted to add, you shouldn't use a third party soft and format the SSD.

Use the tool from the MFG to secure erase the SSD, and even update the firmware again, even if same, as some are destructive and will clean the drive. When installing windows and on the drive page and setting the size and
win makes the 100MB MBR partition, don't manually format the drive, just install windows to it. ( unless the MFG doesn't offer one )

If your running Ivy bridge, use all the needed drivers from the website unless they are the same as on the CD, but I bet they are older then what's listed on the site.

Make sure if you are loading the Sata driver, your not loading the RAID driver from RST, unless your running RAID, you can only use the AHCI driver for a single drive from the RST package.

Win 7 has the AHCI driver so you really don't need to pre install the RST, but you can, it just won't use the MS default driver.

Your BIOS does have ROM switch, so you can use the RST or RST-E. As Parsec said, the RST OROM and the 12.7 driver are better, the driver is actually up to 12.8, but not on the ASRock site.

Just in case you're not using a flash drive to install, check the optical drive connections and clean the DVD.

[tgurus]

Re: Fatal1ty X79 Professional - Problems Installing Windows 7

Installing from a Windows DVD or USB? If USB try using a USB 2.0 port.

Doh! Had it in the USB 3.0 port...

Thanks, Tyler! Plugging into a 2.0 port totally did the trick...