OK, so im working on this computer (DELL Inspiron 531 w/ m2n61-ax MB) that someone tried to restore and the DVDRW died in the middle of the restore. Replaced the DVDRW, slap the vista disc in... BAM no HDD. Now i know this HDD is fine because I stuck it my machine and blew it out, created new partition, formatted NTFS, set ACTIVE. When I boot and go into the BIOS there is no AHCI MODE vs RAID for the SATA settings, Just DISABLE, SATA 1, SATA 1+2. It sees the HDD and the DVDRW np. Boot off the Vista disc, tell it to load drivers, point it to the external drive with the drivers I got from the DELL website using the service code on the back, I even tried downloading the nforce 4 drivers, and STILL doesnt show the HDD in the list to install too. I dug EVERYWHERE on google, for MB drivers, NVIDIA, DELL, tried every sata port to even see if it made a difference. I still cant get this thing to detect the HDD, as if its the wrong driver. BIOS sees it, even enabled the RAID to see if the RAID mode picked it up and it does, so i turned that back off because its not in a raid. Anyone got a CLUE?? help me out i been at it for 2 days on this thing lol.
Dell Inspiron 531 sata drivers not working VISTA install
- Thread starter bigswerve
- Start date
magically started working, booted up the pc with a different sata drive, vista saw it (no drivers loaded/OEM dvd) i hot swapped the drives, and POOF, it came up. installed vista home premium with no issues. Just for clarification, all the research i did said it was a geforce 6100 with nforce 420. WRONG it was a nforce 430. 
Just info for all the googlers that may be in the same boat as me .
Just info for all the googlers that may be in the same boat as me .