Windows XP IDE HDD master not found press F1 error after replacing HDD with SDD

When you changed out the IDE drive to your new SSD, did you change the drive mode in the BIOS? It needs to be changed from IDE mode to SATA or more preferably to AHCI mode. Usually the AHCI driver has to be installed first then the change has to be made in the BIOS and a clean install has to be done.

What's the make/model of your mobo?

Thanks for the reply.
Ok so if I look at the Bios main menu it will show the new sata ssd device and the storage configuration will presumably be set to ide but with choices of ide, ahci or raid. But I can't set to ahci until I have installed the ahci drivers (from asus website) and configured msahci in the registry (and maybe pciide).
Will try this this weekend.

Yes....download and install the ACHI driver then change it in the BIOS. Now the tricky part....once it reboots it will BSOD aka blue screen of death. This means you have to do a clean install of the OS. What you could do is change it to SATA mode and reboot and it should boot up in working order. This is generally what happens for most SSD's but you will need to consult your mobo manual for installing and setting up an SSD. Each mobo vendor has specific ways of isntalling and setting up a SSD.

My understanding was that the register changes to msahci preventing the bsod and it should boot up ok.
Re: change it to SATA mode - I have only seen 3 modes: ide, achi and raid - do you mean ide - ie run the sata as ide until
have made the changes for ahci?

Could you list your system specs.....as detailed as possible.

XP SP3 (Asus motherboard)
Samsung 840 Evo SATA 3 SSD.

I'll check on the Asus model id on Friday as away at the moment.

When I say I have only seen three modes: ide, achi and raid - this is from looking around on the internet at
SATA Bios settings - not had chance to look at my PC settings.

With out the exact model of your mobo, I can't tell you what it says about your HDD modes. With out the detailed information of your systems hardware any further advice is just moot at this point

Those settings are found in your user manual or in your BIOS.

The mobo is an ASUS P5KPL-CM

the System Information screen:

AMIBIOS
Version: 0606
Build Date 03/11/09

Processor
Type: Intel (R) Core (TM) 2 Due CPU E7400 @
2.8GHZ


Main Screen:

Primary IDE Master : [Not Detected]
Primary IDE Slace : IIDE-CD R/RW 16x12]
SATA 1 : [Not Detected]
SATA 2 : [Not Detected]
SATA 3 : [Not Detected]
SATA 4 : [Samsung SSD 840 EV]

If select SATA4 and press enter you get this screen:

Main
SATA 4
Device : Hard Disk
Vendor Samsung SSD 840 Evo 120 GB
Size 120 GB
LBA Mode: Supported
Block Mode: Not Supported
PIO Mode: 4
Async DMA: Multi DMA-2
Ultra DMA: Ultra DMA 5
SMART Monitoring: Supported

LBA/Large Mode [Auto]
Block (MUlti-Sector Transfer) M [Auto]
PIO Mode [Auto]
DMA Mode [Auto]
SMART Monitoring [Auto]
32 Bit Data Transfer [Enabled]


If select Primary IDE Master and press Enter you get this screen:

Primary IDE Master
Device: Not Detected

Type [Auto]
LBA/Large Mode [Auto]
Block (Multi-Sector Transfer) M [Auto]
PIO Mode [Auto]
DMA Mode [Auto]
SMART Monitoring [Auto]
32 Bit Data Transfer [Enabled]

So it looks like this Bios has no Achi or Raid Sata settings. Maybe if I upgrade the Bios
from the ASUS website these options will become available and stop prompting for F1 on boot.
Simiarly its unlikely that the Achi XP device drivers are on the PC

Installing XP on a SSD is only the second best idea. XP does not support Trim. You will have to do a Secure Erase from time to time since there will not be any garbage collection by the controller.

The error message you are seeing has nothing to do with the SATA controller being set to AHCI or IDE . The IDE drive you removed was set to master and the CD drive was set to slave. Since you removed the master, you now need to change the jumper on the CD drive to jumper it as the master for the IDE channel.

I'll bet your CD drive doesn't work now, have you tried it?

Re: Trim - I think the Samsung Magician utility that comes with the SSD has a facility that will aid garbage collection - but its a manual utility so not great.
Re: Thanks for the tip on the jumper for the CD - will try it at the weekend.
Re: download the XP drivers for the SSD - I presume you mean the ahci drivers - changing msachi in the registry is supposed to allow the existing XP on the SSD to boot up - does an XP re-install circumvent this problem?

But I guess all the ahci software is in windows 7 (home premium) so may well simplify things and install windows 7.

With Windows 7, you first set the OS to AHCI - for details see here. Then you set the BIOS.

Paul Blades said:

Re: download the XP drivers for the SSD - (1) I presume you mean the ahci drivers - (2) changing msachi in the registry is supposed to allow the existing XP on the SSD to boot up - (3) does an XP re-install circumvent this problem?

Click to expand...

1. Yes,
2. Maybe and
3. Yes it should.

1a. When you cloned the old drive, you also cloned the setting it was installed with, which would have been just fine if the new hardware was a simular type but this is confusing your system. Yes a new xp install onto the ssd (using ahci drivers) should work but again xp was not designed to use ssd hardware and more importantly xp sp3 is deliberately slowed down by Microsoft so that Vista can talk to it over a network, so even if you get it running there will not be an epic performance gain.

2a. the harddrive is made by Samsung and supports coping data over from a xp machine but does not support xp itself… therefore Asus is your best bet for finding ahci drivers but they are designed to make a ssd work on window 7, Not xp.

You have a 64bit chip so please confirm that you have xp 64bit and not 32bit installed?

I remember the error you are getting from my old windows 7 days and Microsoft did release a fix for it so that people didn't need to re-install their systems but as far as I'm aware it was only a windows 7 issue and nobody ever reported that they got it working on xp.

The Microsoft fix lives here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

3a. Assuming you do manage to find ahci drivers that xp can see during install… again an email to the Asus tech support guys would be your best bet imo… then that error should resolve itself.

Regardless of anything else, my professional advice to you is DON'T FLUSH the BIOS! The most likely outcome on a motherboard that old is a dead system.

In order for you to be able to install the SATA driver during XP install it needs to be on a floppy disk (XP will ONLY look for the drivers on a floppy disk in A: drive). During the install you press F6 when it prompts you to install SCSI drivers.

The only other way to do it is to "slipstream" the driver into the install CD. http://www.wikihow.com/Slipstream-Your-SATA-Drivers-Into-a-Windows-XP-Installation-CD-Using-nLite

Paul Blades said:

...

Main Screen:

Primary IDE Master : [Not Detected]
Primary IDE Slace : IIDE-CD R/RW 16x12]
...

Click to expand...

Again, the error you are seeing that prompts you to press F1 is caused by not having a Master configured for the IDE channel. You can see here in your BIOS that your CD drive is the Primary Slave but there is no Primary Master detected.

If you attempt to install XP directly to the SSD with the machine configured as AHCI you will get a BSOD during install, plain & simple. The performance difference you will see by jumping thru hoops to get the ssd installed via AHCI is minimal so my advice is to configure the machine as IDE and move on. Either that or install Win 7 instead.

Since AHCI didn't exist when XP came out, there is no registry key to change to allow XP to use AHCI (XP wouldn't know what to do with the key if you add it anyway). The registry change is to allow you to switch a machine running Win 7 to AHCI if it was originally installed using IDE.

Re: 'processor is 64k' - my XP is 32k.

Re: SSD and XP: there are so many issues and it sounds like it won't
be as fast as SSD with windows 7 that I'm not likely to pursue it further!

Re:windows 7 and SSD - I have already replaced a Sata drive in a windows 7 netbook
(about 1 year old) with a Samsung SSD - and did not get any problems at all. Have checked
the Bios its set to ACHI (the only other option was IDE). I just plugged it in - did'nt have to
change the Bios. Does this mean that if I buy Windows 7 (home premium 32bit), re-format the SSD,
make the CD ide master, and install 7 by powering-up with the windows 7 CD that the PC should come up
with 7 installed on the SSD and the SSD set to AHCI?