Hands on: Vista in the driving seat

So far, so good, but this issue has generally only applied to hard disk controllers not being recognised.

Ironically, the new catch-22 doesn’t concern hard disks at all – the problem is the optical drive used to install the OS.

As Sata hard disks become increasingly widespread, the demand for older, parallel ATA (Pata) interfaces has greatly reduced.

Some of the latest motherboard chipsets don’t include support for Pata drives at all.

But of course, there’s one Pata device that’s still very common: the optical CD/DVD drive. Despite Sata optical drives now becoming available, it’s fair to say that most of us building a PC will fit an existing Pata optical drive.

Motherboard makers realise this and typically support these ‘legacy’ parallel drives with additional, third-party disk controllers. So, on a modern motherboard, you’d normally find the main chipset only supporting Sata drives, while a secondary controller looks after older parallel drives.

You’ve probably already guessed where this solution falls down. The Windows installation disc happily recognises the main chipset and therefore spots your Sata hard disk without a problem. Unfortunately, it may not recognise the third-party parallel controller, and therefore at some point during the installation may no longer see your optical drive. And there’s the new catch-22: the installation runs aground because Windows setup can no longer see its own disc.

To be fair to Microsoft, this problem also affects other operating systems, including Linux.

Affected systems
I first noticed this problem when trying to install Windows Vista on the popular Asus P5W DH Deluxe motherboard (pictured). This motherboard uses the Intel 975X/ ICH7R chipset for Sata disks and an additional Jmicron controller to support older parallel drives and further Raid options.

Interestingly, Windows XP is happy to install on this motherboard without complaint, but Vista typically hangs after only a few minutes, unable to find the DVD it booted from a few moments earlier.

The lack of a suitable driver for the Jmicron controller on the Vista DVD is the problem, and at first the only way to resolve the situation was to install Vista using an external DVD drive connected to a USB port.

Modern motherboards are quite happy to boot from a USB device and, since the USB controller was part of the main Intel chipset, Vista spotted it and completed the installation without a problem.