pkulk

I doubt, that you really got the right ones. Where did you find Intel Matrix Storage Manager drivers suitable for Windows 2000? AFAIK these drivers are only usable for Windows XP and later Operating Systems. If you want the full performance of your S-ATA hdd's, you should not install Windows 2000. Windows 2000 has only poor support for S-ATA Controllers.My suggestion: You should install Windows XP. You are right and that is the reason why you don't need to integrate any Intel TEXTMODE driver, if you would use Windows XP instead of Windows 2000. Fernando when I searched the intel website, it took me to the latest file to download. reason I am not installing XP directly - I have obtained an XP upgrade disk through my school but it is not recognized as a boot disk when I put it into the CD. instead, if I put it in after win2k is installed, it recognizes fine and asks if i need to upgrade my OS. btw, the problem turned out to be one of the 2 mem sticks i was trying to put in. working on RMA for that but things are working on 1GB DDR2 at the moment. thanks for your comments.

fernando thank you for a very detailed and informative post. I am following step by step with the exception that I am downloading the latest storage manager from intel website applicable for windows 2000. do you think this may cause some problems if i apply the same procedure for win2K? FYI I have a new PC I am trying to build on a ECS G31T-M board which has the ICH7 (no R or M) southbridge. That means no AHCI. When I first tride a W2K slipstream with SP4, the isntall starts off, 'successfully' formats 131GB of a 320GB drive and there I get a blue screen. At the moment, I am going with the assumption that this is a drivers problem and I am going to try and install with a slip-stream version of the right drivers as you described. thanks edits for spelling.