I am setting up a new PC on a GA-MA78GM-S2H motherboard, with the AMD 780G chipset. It includes SATA RAID support with lots of ports. I am using two identical 500GB drives to make a RAID0 set, and I am installing XP Pro to a partition of that set. I have successfully configured the RAID set in BIOS.
The XP installation goes as expected to a point: Boot from CD, press F6 and wait, load drivers from the floppy*, partition the (recognized) 1TB hard drive, copy a lot of system files. Then it goes back to the floppy to copy the drivers over...
"setup cannot copy the file ahcix86.inf". Retry no good. Only ESC to skip the file moves on. Repeat for ahcix86.sys and ahcix86.cat. Then the doomed install resumes copying system files, and then reboots to do the GUI stuff but instead goes bluescreen error 7b (after the brief Windows splash screen).
In order for the RAID set to hold the operating system, I have to deal with this first. I need to get those drivers into the right system folder, it seems. I tried F8 to get to safe mode, but I still get the bluescreen code 7b. I need a DOS prompt with RAID driver support, or I need to do surgery on the WinXPU CD to put the drivers there, perhaps.
My best guess so far is that there are drivers by the same name already there, and they are marked read-only, and Windows install can't deal with over-writing them. I have tested both hard drives and the RAM. A trial install to a single drive was successful, other things being the same.
TIA for all attempts to educate me.
*Install warns that Windows already has an older driver for "AMD AHCI RAID controller x86", and I choose to use the one from the floppy. When I tried using the old one, it didn't see the RAID set.
The XP installation goes as expected to a point: Boot from CD, press F6 and wait, load drivers from the floppy*, partition the (recognized) 1TB hard drive, copy a lot of system files. Then it goes back to the floppy to copy the drivers over...
"setup cannot copy the file ahcix86.inf". Retry no good. Only ESC to skip the file moves on. Repeat for ahcix86.sys and ahcix86.cat. Then the doomed install resumes copying system files, and then reboots to do the GUI stuff but instead goes bluescreen error 7b (after the brief Windows splash screen).
In order for the RAID set to hold the operating system, I have to deal with this first. I need to get those drivers into the right system folder, it seems. I tried F8 to get to safe mode, but I still get the bluescreen code 7b. I need a DOS prompt with RAID driver support, or I need to do surgery on the WinXPU CD to put the drivers there, perhaps.
My best guess so far is that there are drivers by the same name already there, and they are marked read-only, and Windows install can't deal with over-writing them. I have tested both hard drives and the RAM. A trial install to a single drive was successful, other things being the same.
TIA for all attempts to educate me.
*Install warns that Windows already has an older driver for "AMD AHCI RAID controller x86", and I choose to use the one from the floppy. When I tried using the old one, it didn't see the RAID set.