If you have tried to install Windows XP to Asus G1S, you may have encountered the infamous BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) in very early stage of the installation process. The reason is that XP installation disk doesn't contain drivers for Asus G1S SATA hard disk, and the installation will fail when installer tries to access the hard disk.
If you have BIOS version 205 [or newer version], you can go to BIOS and enable the SATA compatibility mode and this will solve the problem - see "Changing Asus G1S Hard Disk IDE/SATA Compatibility Mode" for more details. If you are using BIOS 203 or 204, you have to either upgrade to BIOS 300 (or newer) or keep reading this post.
If you do not want to upgrade your BIOS to version 300 - or you want to use the SATA enhanced mode for a reason or another, you have to create a special installation disk for Windows XP, which will have the needed SATA driver. The process is also called slipstreaming.
For this process you need your original Windows XP installation disk, some 1GB+ of free disk space, an empty CD and software for burning the CD - for example Nero or freeware CDburnerXP. You also need the drivers and two utilities you can download from the net. So, let's get started!
1. Download 32-bit Intel® Matrix Storage Manager RAID/AHCI Floppy Configuration Utility "f6flpy32.zip" version 7.8.0.1012 from Intel's download site. You can also use the direct download link and save the "f6flpy32.zip" zip-file for example to your Desktop for later reference.
2. Download and install utility Winimage. Version 8.0 or later is just fine. This utility is needed to extract the drivers from the floppy image we downloaded in step 1.
3. Extract the SATA driver from the setup file f6flpy32.exe.
- Unzip the downloaded f6flpy32.zip and save the resulting file f6flpy32.exe to your Desktop.
- Create an empty folder eg. "Drivers" to your Desktop.
- Launch Winimage and skip the registration info.
- Winimage: Select File | Open and pick the f6flpy32.exe from the Desktop.
- Winimage: Select Image | Extract and save the files into the "Drivers" folder on your Desktop.
- Check that the folder "Drivers" contains eight files.
- Now you can close (and uninstall) Winimage.
4. Download and install utility nLite. Select version 1.4.1 with installer 2.42MB. [You may also need to download and install Microsoft NET Framework 2.0.] This utility is needed to read the contents of your original Windows XP installation disk, adding the downloaded SATA drivers and finally creating the special Windows XP installation disk for Asus G1S.
5. Next we will copy your original Windows XP installation disk to your hard disk. This requires some 800MB of free disk space.
- Insert your original Windows XP SP2 installation disk to your CD/DVD drive. [If you have the autorun option is selected, the XP installation program may start when you instert the disk into the CD/DVD drive. Just select Exit to close the installation program.]
- Launch nLite, select your language, and proceed to "Locating the Windows installation".
- Browse to the CD/DVD and press OK.
- Select the location where the original installation disk is to be copied. Create an empty folder if necessary. I recommend to create an empty folder "Asus G1S XP Disk" to the Desktop for easy access.
- It will take some time while nLite copies the whole disk to your computer.
- When the process if complete you may proceed by pressing "Next".
- Skip the "Presets" section by pressing "Next".
6. Next we will add the SATA drivers to the installation file set.
- In the nLite "Task Selection" page, select the options [Integrate] "Drivers" and [Create] "Bootable ISO" and press "Next".
- In the "Drivers" page, select "Insert" and pick option "Single Driver".
- A file selection window pops up.
- Navigate to the Desktop folder "Drivers" where you will see two INF-files.
- Select file "iiahci.inf" and press "Open".
- You should see a list of drivers
- Select "Intel 82801 HEM/HMB SATA AHCI Controller (Mobile ICH8M-E/M)" and press "Ok".
- You will be back on "Drivers" page. Select "Next" to proceed.
- A window will pop up and ask "Do you want to start the process". Press "Yes."
- It will take a minute or two to process the files.
- When the "Processing" is complete, press "Next" to proceed.
7. Finally we will create a bootable ISO image to burn on CD/DVD
- Still in nLite, we are on page "Bootable ISO", where we can create a new Windows XP installation disk for Asus G1S. You can select option "Direct Burn", but I will select option "Create Image" in order to create an ISO image that I will burn later to a blank CD.
- Select "Make ISO" and give a name to your ISO image - something "Asus G1S XP Install.iso".
- The ISO image creation process will take a couple of minutes.
- Finally press Press "Next" to exit from nLite.
At this point you will have a special bootable Windows XP installation disk image, which contains necessary drivers for Asus G1S hard disk. Now you may burn the ISO image - see "Installing Windows XP on Asus G1S" on how to proceed from here.
