CentOS - Mar 2008 - Centos 5.1 installation problems -- couldn't find devices

Hi, there,

I just bought a Dell Inspiron 530 with the following basic configuration:

Inspiron 530 Intel Core2 processor Q6600 (2.40Ghz 1066FSB) w/Quad Core
Technology and 8MB cache

SATA 0: Samsung HD501LJ    (500GB Serial ATA II Hard Drive(7200RPM))
SATA 1: PDBS DVD +/- RW DH-16W1S   (16X DVD+/-RW Drive)

I tried to install Centos 5.1 on it with dual boot (keep Windows XP
partition) and got stuck on some strange issues.  I hope one of you could
shed some light on what I should do next.  Here's the summary of my
installation attempts.

Attempt 1:  I burned both an installation DVD (slow and verified) and
installation CD #1.  I tried them both and both failed due to no driver
found.  More specifically, at the step for "what type of media contains the
packages to be installed?", I chose "Local CDROM", the result
screen said
"No driver found" and prompted me to Select driver from a list of
drivers.
I randomly chose a few but none worked.

Attempt 2. I tried network installation.  I chose "HTTP" when prompted
for
the media. I then specified the
mirror.centos.org<http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5/os/i386/>as the
Web Site Name and
/centos/5/os/i386/ <http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5/os/i386/>  as the
Red
Hat directory.  It got the installation started successfully. However, at
the step for partitioning the disk, I was prompted to choose the partition
option and I checked the "review and modify partitioning layout". 
Also,
there's no drive shown in the "select the drive(s) to use for this
installation" panel.  When i clicked Next,  a "No drives Found"
message
popped up, saying "an error has occurred -- no  valid devices were found on
which to create new file systems. please check your hardware for the cause
of this problem."

It seemed both attempts failed due to the installation program couldn't find
either the SATA DVD drive or the SATA hard disk.  However,  it's hard to
believe Centos 5.1 installation couldn't recognize these two SATA devices.

I'm now stuck.  Any suggestion or advice is much appreciated.


-- 
Regards,

-Hui
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>It seemed both attempts failed due to the installation program couldn't
find either the SATA DVD drive or the SATA hard disk.  However,  it's hard
to believe Centos 5.1 installation couldn't recognize >these two SATA
devices.
>
>I'm now stuck.  Any suggestion or advice is much appreciated.
CentOS more than likely will recognize the devices once they are on a controller
it recognizes :)
That model appears to use a recent Intel SATA controller (cmiiw) and is only
sold with Vista. You could look at the bios and see if the Vendor enabled an
option to adjust how the controller appears to the OS, look for a setting that
says something like AHCI/Native/Legacy etc...

I'm sure someone here has used such a recent system and has a solution. I
recall someone here or on another list suggesting some kernel parameters that
might need to be passed.

jlc