SATA drivers for ASUS A8V deluxe

[stevenrw]

Hello, its me again.......
Right, I'm venturing into new territory now. I have so many old bits and bobs in boxes I thought I'd put them together to make up an XP Home machine. I have a legit version of XP Home SP2 and an old case with a newish 600w p/s and a WD Caviar SE SATA2 HDD, sitting on an ASUS A8V Deluxe mobo, all disgarded over the years due to upgrades.
The clincher was that the W7 drivers for my Soundblaster Audigy2 card are so bad, I thought I'd rebuild so I could use some of the facilities that card offered from time to time.
So thats the background.
I'm hoping that a lot of the configuration will be still set in the BIOS as it was XP that I last used with the board.
Now, as I said, I've never built a machine from scratch before, so its an interesting, fun project. Apart from awaiting a 24 to 20 pin ATX power adapter all is connected up inside the case and once that adapter arrives I'm ready to take the deep breath and power up.
Two questions for you guys:
1. Since I can't load graphics card drivers until the OS is loaded, when I first power up, should I just use the on board vga connection to the monitor or can/should I physically install the AGP graphics card in its slot and use its vga connection without the drivers for the time being?
2. This is probably the most problemmatic one. I will be installing XP from the original Windows disc onto a SATA 2 Western Digital Caviar SE HDD. I don't have the mobo drivers disc anymore nor do I have a blank floppy. Do I actually need SATA drivers with this board? I've taken a quick look at the Asus website and I can't find any downloads for SATA drivers, just a few bits and pieces for RAID.
Also, will the install perform a reformat of the drive as a stage in the load install process before loading Windows.

I'm sure you guys do this all the time, but it is a first for me and I'm learning as I go so any help/advice would, as always, be really appreciated.

[kinmel]

With Windows xp you need the Via SATA drivers to install the O.S.

From http://uk.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_Socket_939/A8V_Deluxe/#download    download  the file  VIARAID220d.zip

unzip the file and copy the contents of the SATA folder onto a floppy disk

Insert the floppy when required by the WinXP install

[Rik]

Thanks, Alan. 

[Glenn]

Only problem as Steve says, he doesn't have a floppy disc

[Rik]

I thought he merely didn't have a blank floppy? I can always send him one if that's the case.

[Steve]

The other solutions are to build a Windows install CD incorporating the required drivers ie NliteOS
http://www.nliteos.com/
Or use this opportunity to try an alternative OS ie Linux

[stevenrw]

Thanks everybody, prompt as always. I don't know what I'd do without you all...
The floppy issue was simply that the machine that is working doesn't have a floppy drive, so it was a bit problemmatic getting the data onto a disc. The one I'm rebuilding does have a floppy drive, so it was just getting the drivers onto a diskette to start with. However, a couple of calls to neighbours looks to have that covered now.
Any views on the graphics card issue?
Also since the board has been collecting dust in a box for a couple of years I guess replacing the cmos battery might be worthwhile ? I assume that will mean resetting a lot of stuff in the BIOS, so standby for more help requests guys, sorry....

[Steve]

XP should install the VGA driver add the correct one later.

[Technical Ben]

Would the latest version not have the drivers on disk already?

[FritzBox]

You might not need the drivers unless you are installing raid, but if you do kinmel's link is a good place to start, you will have to also make sure the drive is connected on the Via controllers, there's also Promise controllers on that board.
You may also have to jumper pins 5 and 6 to get the SATA2 drive to see the SATA1 controller, essentially reduce the speed of the drive

Of course I could be wrong and hopefully someone will correct me