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acid45
08-04-2004, 04:01 PM
I'm having troubles with a RAID card under windows XP home and I don't know where I should ask. Promise doesn't seem to have a forum I can find. I don't think it's an OS issue, but could be.

Where would I ask for help?







And just in case someone here has worked with raids under windows XP I'll post it here...just in case.


Well people are going to be mad, this isn't a Linux BOX. Someone paid me to build them a system. They have the parts and they want a raid, for VERY IMPORTANT information. It's a business at home computer. I'm only having one problem, and that's getting windows XP home to boot with the raid card.

I've checked the Promise Technologies site checked out the FAQ and followed all instructions that pretained to my solution and some that didn't.

I've re-installed windows XP. First time I had it set up in the raid for a mirror raid. The second time I had it on the onboard IDE and then once I got into windows I installed the raid card drivers, set up the raid again, and still the same problem.

USB is disabled
NO other PCI devices
NO AGP card
onboard S3 graphics
IDE channel 0 is disabled
QuickBoot is disabled
Everything but the bare minimum is disabled.
SCSI boot device on Phoenix BIOS
I see the Promise BIOS after the IDE checking. It detects the raid and I've had no problems with the installation, other than if I had the floppy in the drive BEFORE I started the windows setup from CD it would cause a reading error, I just removed the floppy, re-inserted it and it worked fine.

When windows boot the first time it got to the windows loading screen. the "green load bar" got half way across the screen and then the OS reboots.

Since then when the "Windows failed to load" screen the screen is a bunch of greyscaled lines going up and down the screen--this was fixed by disabling the AGP--and then the "green load bar" gets half way across the "load meter" and the same thing happens.

If I boot in "SAFE MODE" it gets to "c:\...\Mup.sys" freezes for a second then reboots.

Because of the "grey lines" I THINK it may be a conflict between the S3 and the RAID card. This is my first raid installation, thus the noobishness.

I've read some posts about people rebooting at the Mup.sys and they had problems where removing USB, physically, on boot and then plugging them in worked. that would get annoying. I couldn't find anything that had to do with a RAID card causing the problems. I found one about PCI devices causing it but well it seems to be booting if I don't use the PCI RAID controller and so I think it's a conflict somewhere and I HOPE it's something I can fix and don't have to replace anything or tell them what they ordered is incompatible. I havn't been able to find any hardware conflict lists. I was using a USB mouse but I had USB disabled and removed it and still the same thing.

===============================================

Again, just somewhere else I can post a question would be great, somewhere where the members don't type "liek dis all da time cuz i dont lkfie it that much". Punctuations is good not only for pausing and whatnot, but for identifying like out of "lkfie."

Something to try but someone found the solution and it could be a driver, although they had a different promise raid card but the same problem.

hard candy
08-04-2004, 05:47 PM
http://www.techsupportforum.com/showthread.php?t=1613

http://www.techsupportforum.com/search.php?searchid=17464

And I was feeling bad because folks were having trouble with linux and SATA. Now I don't feel so bad. :)

happybunny
08-04-2004, 06:10 PM
I assume you are using hardware RAID from Promise, right?

1. Setup RAID from RAID "bios" as you want it.
2. Boot off of Windows XP install disk.
3. As soon as Windows XP CD starts to boot, insert RAID Card floppy disk with drivers
4. Hit F6 a few times DURING the XP initial startup....don't wait. As soon as XP CD starts to boot, insert floppy and hit F6 several times.
5. During the first few XP setup screen, it will ask you if you want to use 3rd party drivers. Say yes. It should automagically read your floppy since you hit F6 and had the floppy in early enough.
6. If not, you have the option of reading from the floppy....do so now.
7. Choose your RAID card from the floppy drivers list.

This should then continue to load XP with the RAID driver "built in" and it "should work".

Good luck!!

acid45
08-04-2004, 09:06 PM
Thanks guys. i found my solution. For some reason the drivers with my motherboard break my RAID setup. What I mean is as soon as I install my motherbord drivers it starts the reboot problem. I can install the LAN and AC97 drivers fine but the motherboard chipset drivers break the RAID setup. Don't know why, don't know how.

Components
Microstar International(MSI) KM4M-L micro-atx motherboard
Promise Technologies TX2000 Ultra ATA/133 RAID card

I can get away with out installing the chipset drivers for now and I hope when I install windows XP pro this will rectify itself :P Big hopes LMAO! Microsoft FIXING itself...Bahahaha...*cough* blaster *cough*

Anyway, now I will know where to post these questions if I have them in the future, I have suscribed to this thread :D so I "never" lose it.

Those are almost the same instructions in the RAID card manual and what I researched online since it was my frist RAID I was "ANSII" antsy...anxious...whatever. Thanks! It confirmed I DID do it right and I wasn't doing something noobish :D www.techsupportforum.com was the first site I found "useful" information where most people didn't use a lot of accronyms and slang, well it was the second site I checked but I just found it funny...I used to type like that until I was criticised about it...

Instead of about:blank I think I hsould start setting my home page to google..it's what I use most recently. Google.ca ->hotmail.com google.ca->justlinux.com...it's become a bad habbit :( I started using ctrl+l as well. I like what it does in mozilla better because on SLOW P2s it takes a while to load.