Vista - Why doesn't VISTA 64 recognize hard drive?

I am trying a new install on a new machine. I have 2 WD 250 GB drives (not in RAID config). When VISTA installs it tells me the first drive is not recognized as boot drive and won't load. I tried to install on second drive and get a error message about a volume does not meet VISTA criteria (or something like that)and won't install. These are both brand new drives. Both drives are correctly identified in the BIOS. Any suggestion would be appreciated.

Hello JimDandy51,

Welcome to the Forums!

Are they SATA or IDE? They tell me Vista doesn't "like" IDE, there is a way to make them work.
But someone else will have to help you with that, as I have no experience with it!

Sorry I can't be more help.


Later Ted

They are both SATA drives.

Hi JimDandy51,

Did you install your SATA Controller driver during setup before installing Vista?

Not sure what you mean by that. I can install drivers from BIOS? I was under the impression the driver would install as part of the windows setup.

Hey Jim,

No not from the BIOS...Some Motherboards have restrictions requiring you to have a driver to install Vista on SATA drives before Vista can boot correctly.

At This screen you select "Load Driver" (bottom left) and install the SATA or RAID Controller Driver. (screenshot from one of our site Tutorials)



What Brand and Model Motherboard do you use? I can lookup the correct driver for you?

I appreciate the help, but I think I've figured it out. I was able to finally get the one drive to load. Once I had it running I was able to see that the other drive had issues. I can see it in disk management but it shows "unreadable". I'm thinking it is a defective drive. I've disconnected and will be returning to newegg.

Asus P5K - E

Your welcome Jim.

If you need some help you know where to find us.