Windows XP installation stability problems with SATA RAID H.D.

[Evil_Elvis]

Raid Windows XP 64 install

I would be surprised if that were the case. As I'm sure plenty of people mirror Pro. Because this is a hardware mirror, XP should not even know a mirror is taking place, and just thinks there is one drive and that's it. Because this isn't a software RAID, which on the server editions can do I think.

So perhaps load without the RAID driver? Odd, not sure.

Actually after spending some time on the phone with Adaptec tech support and too many "Error Codes: EF Panic Errors!!!" from the Raid card post I went ahead and sent the card back for a new one. I agree with what you said about this being a hardware mirror and look forward to a flawless install when I get my new Adaptec 2120s raid card.
Thanks for the help.

 

[Vigilante]

Hmm, you say this is 64bit edition? Wonder if that has different RAID handling. Well anyhoo, I hope something starts working soon.

good luck

 

[mrmojorisin18]

Possible Solution...

I work in a small shop in town...a man brought his machine in with some serious software problems...we decided the most efficient route to take was to format and start from scratch...

Heres the system specs:
--------------------------------
Wintergreen - brand system(something like that)
p4 via chipset vt8237 motherboard m952 ver 1.3b
DVD drive pri master IDE
80 GB Segway HDD SATA
512 megs of RAM ...etc...

I told him to bring in his software bundle that came with the pc...windows xp home (proprietary CD "wintergreen brand" customized system restore) This method of restoring a machine back to its original factory software settings is popular among large computer retailers such as emachines, gateway, and dell...I put the cd in the drive, turned the machine on, booted into the windows setup from the CD..and it said no HDD recognized.

Anyway, I found the drivers needed to run the onboard SATA controller, put them on a floppy in the correct manner which i wont discuss now (google: sata drivers windows xp install) ...pressed F6 as needed to load 3rd party drivers...then selected from a list the proper drivers for my OS (winxp home)...the installation accepts the drivers, continues on to format the drive..then when its finished it asks for the files off the floppy again saying "cant find file viamraid.sys" which was on the floppy...it simply couldnt find the files it had just used, i was amazed..not having much of another option, i skipped the files it couldnt find on the floppy and tried to continue the installation but got a blue screen STOP 0x7B...

I wound up having to use another copy of windows XP home v2002 with sp1 on it... in combination with the driver disk pressing F6...for some reason the cd that came with the machine didnt work properly...hopefully this post will save someone the hours i spent figureing...

 

[regnier]

Raid

I bought a new computer and I got the same problem. After only one
update from Windows xp the computer has froozen. I decided to start
windows in safe mode, but could not see where to start to solve the problem.
After a wide, I decided to install XP again. Impossible because Xp did not
recognized my disks (two SATA 165 Go). From the web I got information about it
and manage to turn off the RAID IDE configuration to a normal standard IDE.
Now I install again XP and it seems ok. Some peolpe advices to turn on RAID
after successfull installation but since I do not know what means RAID exactly
I am a bit afraid to try even that.
My BIOS is so with a standard config and If someone has some advices
I will be pleased to apply them

I have also another problem xp doesn not see more than 3071 Mb RAM
memory and I do not know how to solve that ?

All the best

Jean-Luc

My config:
ASUS P5WD2 PREMIUM P+ 3 GHz 830 D
Two 2 GHz DDR2 533Mh (but see only 3071 instead of around 4000)
LEADTEAK 7800 GTX (graphic card)
Two 160 GB Sata2 (here I am afraid I should use RAID ? but not sure)

 

[Vash]

For people with problems with getting Windows XP to recognise your RAID setup I found a way to do it.

Use nlite (www.nliteos.com) and add the required SATA / RAID drivers (look in the FAQ (http://www.nliteos.com/faq.html#Q2, note this is only for nforce chipsets but it may/should work for others.

Then when you install Windows there is no need to use a floppy and F6, handy if like me, your PC doesn't have a floppy drive!

I used this method and now XP see's my RAID array instead of two HD's!
Btw, XP was seeing the RAID array as two HD's sized (130/140GB rather than 250GB).

For my setup I used the latest nforce4 drivers (6.70) and nvidia RAID BIOS 4.81. The mobo itself is a GA-K8N Ultra SLi. And the HD's are SATA 150 HD's - 250GB Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm, 8MB cache. The two disks are in a RAID 0 Stripe.

The problem seems to be XP doesn't know crap all about SATA drives. Also when you use F6 XP will use those drivers but then discard them and use its own instead of installing them. That's why I used nlite to make a custom install disk that does install them. Consequently using my custom disk XP now sees my RAID array as one disk sized about 465GB!

Other source/s of information:
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/19004/?o=140

 

[Evil_Elvis]

I bought a new computer and I got the same problem. After only one
update from Windows xp the computer has froozen. I decided to start
windows in safe mode, but could not see where to start to solve the problem.
After a wide, I decided to install XP again. Impossible because Xp did not
recognized my disks (two SATA 165 Go). From the web I got information about it
and manage to turn off the RAID IDE configuration to a normal standard IDE.
Now I install again XP and it seems ok. Some peolpe advices to turn on RAID
after successfull installation but since I do not know what means RAID exactly
I am a bit afraid to try even that.
My BIOS is so with a standard config and If someone has some advices
I will be pleased to apply them

I have also another problem xp doesn not see more than 3071 Mb RAM
memory and I do not know how to solve that ?

All the best

Jean-Luc

My config:
ASUS P5WD2 PREMIUM P+ 3 GHz 830 D
Two 2 GHz DDR2 533Mh (but see only 3071 instead of around 4000)
LEADTEAK 7800 GTX (graphic card)
Two 160 GB Sata2 (here I am afraid I should use RAID ? but not sure)

For your ram problem I'm not sure if this will help but it's either one or the other. Either Windoz XP has a problem with recognizing more than 3 Gigs of ram or it may be your motherboard.

 

[Evil_Elvis]

As far as my problem with my SCSI raid, I received a new Adaptec raid 2120s card and updated it as well as the drivers during the install and everything worked fine. Thanks for all of the help.
Actually it worked flawlessly for roughly 3 months untill I added a new Soundblaster X-Fi sound card and it started crashing/ rebooting randomly. After RMA'ing 2 motherboards and 2 power supplies I figured out that my power supply couldn't handle the Amperage loads. To make a long story short I learned some more about motherboard minimum power requirements and power supplies. In the past it really wasn't a big issue for most of us because either we didn't have the hardware or it didn't require that much power.
Here is a good web page for reference: http://forums.livingwithstyle.com/t241306-choosing-powersupply-long.html

I am moving from a 500W (Ultra from Tigerdirect) psu to a 600W(Ultra) to an Enermax 620W. It turns out that with all of my hardware I am pulling around 37A.
And now a new motherboard and psu on its way, hopefully, I will have my system back up and running very soon.
Here are my specs for my computer:
ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe
(2) OCZ Platinum Series 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200)
AMD 4400+Athlon X2 cpu retail
(2) BFG Geforce 7800 GT OC sli gfx
Adaptec 2120s SCSI raid pcie card
Ultra 600W X-Finity psu
(2) Compaq 18.2 gig 15k rpm SCSI hd (for XP 64 os only) Mirrored
(2) SAMSUNG SpinPoint P Series 250GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s ( for everything else except OS related info) Mirrored
Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi sound card
1 DVD-R/RW+-
1 CDRW/DVD ROM
1 standard 3.5" floppy drive
1 standard Modem

 

[tweakboy]

Your gonna need proper drivers to install them upon your xp installation,

 

[howard_hopkinso]

Your gonna need proper drivers to install them upon your xp installation,

Please look at the date of threads before posting.

Regards Howard

 

[Mikkel315]

Samo - problem on reinstall

I have been using Raid 0 for a year on a computer with a Asus p4p800 mb.
I got an error the other nite on a reboot saying command com was corrupted.
So I was going to reinstal Xp pro as I have on other systems. The raid controller shows the drives as it posts. I press F6 and the system sees the drivers and seems to install them. When i get to the point of a reinstall it says "drives are found and forces me to quite. It does this for the R repair choice and Reinstall. I used norton to check the disks by booting the rescue disks and all the data seems fine.

Help appreciated
Mikkel