PowerEdge T110 & SBS2003 R2

Hi,

I got around this error by switching the SATA controller to ATA mode in the BIOS. The default is AHCI (www.intel.com/.../ahci.htm)

I believe the AHCI specification is NOT compatible with Windows 2003.

Hi,

I got around this error by switching the SATA controller to ATA mode in the BIOS. The default is AHCI (http://www.intel.com/technology/serialata/ahci.htm)

I believe the AHCI specification is NOT compatible with Windows 2003.

AHCI IS compatible with 2003 and XP, but they need a driver for it to work.  Changing to ATA mode turns off all the features of AHCI/SATA that make it better than the 10 year old ATA/IDE technology.  Immediately after booting to the CD, Windows Setup gives you an F6 prompt from which you can load a RAID/storage driver from a floppy disk.  Alternatively to using a floppy, you can use nLiteOS.com to integrate/slipstream the driver into your installation media (this will create a new CD from which to install).

Customizing your own OS is not a violation of the EULA - customizing your OS then distributing it publicly is a violation; Microsoft has many free tools for customizing your installations for singular or mass distribution/deployment within your organization.  nLite, is simply a third-party tool that does the same thing - just with a much easier interface.

2003 non-R2 is not supported, but 2003 R2 is, which means that this method of dealing with missing storage drivers was intended to be dealt with - not ignored and called unsupported.  2008 and later OS's use a different method of loading the storage drivers, but 2003 must have the driver slipstreamed via floppy or image preparation.

The driver you use depends on the controller you have.  Assuming we are talking about the onboard controller (since you cannot set add-in controllers to AHCI/RAID/ATA modes), you would need this driver:

www.dell.com/.../DriverFileFormats

If using another controller (SAS 6/iR or PERC H200), the method is exactly the same ... but with one of those, there is no BIOS option that will let you work around the lack of drivers.  The only way to install on one of those controllers is to load the driver from floppy at F6 or nLite (or similar ... or using the Dell installation utility).

Thankyou for your concise help. You clearly know alot more, what you're talking about than me - At the start of my career thankyou again! :)

Just been around the block a few times :)  Hope that helps.  Shoot if you have any other questions/problems.

Thanks for clearing that up - Can you provide a link to the driver for users to do this?

One issue with using nLite is within many corporations software such as this would need to be signed off/sanctioned and you probably break the EULA by editing your OS . I guess this is why its easier for Dell to just declare it as unsupported in the documentation.