XP64 RAID no go

[amnonliu]

Fernando,

 

That was the second way I tried, but after using nLite, the installer would not accept my windows key. I wonder if it is because I have an OEM key. In the older versions of windows /i386/setupp used to have a code in it that indicated the key type that was expected. Xp64 doesn't seem to have this. I wonder if nLite doesn't handle XP64 keys correctly, or the key is tied to some more complicated hash of the disk contents. Has anyone gotten nLite to work with xp64 OEM?

 

I had another idea. Since I have the DR board, it has 8 SATA ports, 4 on nVidia RAID, and 4 on Silicon Image RAID. The Silicon Image chip has XP64 drivers on DFI's site for this MOBO, so I assume they are known to work. I'll just use those and try again with SATA 5,6 instead of SATA 1,2

 

In the mean time, since it is taking me so long to get this to work, I will put another hdd on the machine to use as a temporary OS installation, so I can at least use the machine for other things while I struggle with this RAID issue.

[superflyguy]

Hey ho chief, I had a similar problem, with WinXp+Sp2 cd (the combined CD). I had to basically hunt down my WinXp+Sp1 cd and all seemed to run finr then. This was using the nvidia SATA2 ports on the mobo and SATA2 HDD's. Afaik SAT1 drives or ports don't have the same problem, but i wanted to take advantage of all SATA2 gear. Cheers

[amnonliu]

I put another drive on my machine, so I could have a windows install that worked while I was troubleshooting the broken RAID install. I moved my RAID drives over to channels 5&6, so I could try the Sil raid controller. The BIOS settings only let you enable RAID for 1,2,3,4 so I wasn't sure how to set that. But in the RAID setup utility, I got the Sil settings, so I thought I could try anyway. I used the Sil setup to low-level reformat my drives, and I raided them. I booted with the Sil XP64 RAID drivers from DFI's web site, but Windows doesn't see the RAID at all... it won't show up as a disk at all. While searching the webs for any advice, I found Angry's tutorial:

http://www.angrygames.com/nf4raid-1.htm

And it says pretty much what I had been trying over and over again, with the exception that it says the second driver needs to be installed twice. So I thought I'd give it a shot. I moved the disks back to Channel's 1&2 (with my working installation on 3, on another drive) and I reinstalled windows. And it worked!! I am not sure if the double-installing of the second driver did it, or if it was the low-level reformating, or if it was moving the drives. I used the old 6.65 drivers.

Unfortunatly, since I had an OS on my third drive, I somehow ended up with a freak installation with RAID as the boot disk and non-RAID as the system disk. I unplugged the third drive, reinstalled, and now my RAID is my C: drive, boot disk, and system disk, and everything is happy.

 

All in all, I think I installed Windows over ten times. What a nightmare. But it works right at last!!

[gord27]

Hey ho chief, I had a similar problem, with WinXp+Sp2 cd (the combined CD). I had to basically hunt down my WinXp+Sp1 cd and all seemed to run finr then. This was using the nvidia SATA2 ports on the mobo and SATA2 HDD's. Afaik SAT1 drives or ports don't have the same problem, but i wanted to take advantage of all SATA2 gear. Cheers

 

yea mine was sp2 integrated as well. i did get mine to work with a sp2 cd though.

 

 

 

hmm so install second driver twice. i'll try that next time i format. gonna be moving to a raid 0+1 in the coming weeks.

[kevin2735]

I am not sure if the double-installing of the second driver did it, or if it was the low-level reformating, or if it was moving the drives.

 

You can find that in the MSDN Knowledge Base under the heading, "Weird, wacky, kooky, s*&%t.... I mean stuff."

[DarkStar02]

I put another drive on my machine, so I could have a windows install that worked while I was troubleshooting the broken RAID install. I moved my RAID drives over to channels 5&6, so I could try the Sil raid controller. The BIOS settings only let you enable RAID for 1,2,3,4 so I wasn't sure how to set that. But in the RAID setup utility, I got the Sil settings, so I thought I could try anyway. I used the Sil setup to low-level reformat my drives, and I raided them. I booted with the Sil XP64 RAID drivers from DFI's web site, but Windows doesn't see the RAID at all... it won't show up as a disk at all. While searching the webs for any advice, I found Angry's tutorial:

http://www.angrygames.com/nf4raid-1.htm

And it says pretty much what I had been trying over and over again, with the exception that it says the second driver needs to be installed twice. So I thought I'd give it a shot. I moved the disks back to Channel's 1&2 (with my working installation on 3, on another drive) and I reinstalled windows. And it worked!! I am not sure if the double-installing of the second driver did it, or if it was the low-level reformating, or if it was moving the drives. I used the old 6.65 drivers.

Unfortunatly, since I had an OS on my third drive, I somehow ended up with a freak installation with RAID as the boot disk and non-RAID as the system disk. I unplugged the third drive, reinstalled, and now my RAID is my C: drive, boot disk, and system disk, and everything is happy.

 

All in all, I think I installed Windows over ten times. What a nightmare. But it works right at last!!

Wait- reiterate for me. What exactly did you do?

 

I am having the exact same problem with my two hitachi drives. BSODs with Tech. Info as

 

*** STOP:0x0000007B (0xFFFFFADFE4A323C0, 0xFFFFFFFFC0000034, 0x000000000000000000, 0x000000000000000000)

 

This is my first ever RAID setup and I am getting INCREDIBLY discouraged. I have installed Windows Media Center Edition 3 times and x64 2 times today. HELP!

 

EDIT: Forgot to mention. I've downloaded the newest x64 raid drivers and put them on a floppy using the WinImage self extracting exe and I've flashed my motherboard BIOS to the newest version using Tmods CD 6.5.