How to make a Windows XP CD with NVRAID Drivers built in.

[passionne]

Thanks for your advice.

 

But, yesterday night, before seeing your message, I tried another solution : since Nvidia RAID driver 6.14 seemed to work when it was included in nLite-customized Windows XP CD, I saved this driver in a floppy disk and followed the normal procedure : booting from original XP CD, pressing F6, choosing the 2 Nvidia files...And this time, it worked, I was able to select these two files !

Then, during XP installation, a few messages appeared : "the program cannot find nvraid.cat" then "nvata.cat" files. I pressed ESC to continue and finally, Windows XP was installed on 2 RAID disks !!

 

So my previous problems were probably linked to a corrupted file in NvidiaRAID driver rev 1.00 or when I customized Windows XP CD with Nlite, I probably deleted an important file, but I don't see which file. No matter, I will use the original XP CD.

 

But I have now another problem, one more ! It is not a critical one but it is annoying : when I boot, just after the screen "Nvidia stripe, press F10 if you want to enter", a new message appears : "disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter". Then, if I insert Windows XP CD, it goes on and boots. But if I don't insert the CD, the message keeps appearing, with no boot.

 

In the motherboard bios, I specified the priority stripe (first) and the hard disk is the first priority boot device. I checked the file boot.ini and it is normal. And, in Nvidia RAID utility (F10), the stripe boot is marked "BBS" and I cannot select "set boot" option in the utility. What does "BBS" mean ? May it be the reason of the non-boot ? Or may it be caused by the missing "nvraid.cat" then "nvata.cat" files ?

 

I don't think that these missing files are the cause since they are not included on the Windows XP CD, whereas inserting this CD enables me to boot.

 

Thanks for your answers.

[passionne]

Hello,

 

I finally managed to solve all my problems. I am going to describe how I solved them, it may be useful for other people.

 

When the message "disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter" appeared, I enabled the main system partition as an active partition, in Windows XP manager (start menu/ right click on desktop/manage, disks management and right click on the partition). Indeed, an active partition is a bootable partion. Consequently, it should boot now.

 

Then, I tried to boot again and another error message : "the NTLDR file is missing". I solved that by copying this file and another one in my main partition called D: from the Windows XP CD, in the recovery console (D:copy f:i386ntldr and D: copy f:i386ntdetect.com where f: is my DVD driver).

 

OK, problem solved but at next reboot, still another message : "false boot.ini, boot from C:Windows". And it booted.

 

I started to understand the cause of all my problems : C: was my backup disk, not in RAID 0. And Windows XP was installed on D:, on 2 RAID 0 SATA disks. I have read that the active partition is C: by default, the one which enables the boot. But my system partition was D:. So D: could not boot since all the boot information were located in C: partition. I checked that : the D: boot.ini file was empty whereas the C: boot.ini file was correct. Consequently, my first error was to install the system partition which hosts Windows XP on another partition than C:

 

My only solution was a complete reinstallation : I formatted and unplugged the backup disk in order not to have C: still attributed. And I tried to install Windows XP CD from the original CD. This time, I was not able to insert the 2 Nvidia 6.14 RAID drivers (F6), while it had already worked. I booted again, pressed F10, deleted the RAID array and all the data (very important) and created the striping array again. And this time, the 6.14 RAID drivers were accepted at the beginning of the Windows XP installation. I installed XP on C: partition and it worked : now, Windows XP boots with no problems and Windows is on the C: partition, composed of 2x160 GB RAID 0. And for my backup disk, I plugged it after my installation was finished. Its letter is now F:

 

To conclude :

- The RAID array which hosts Windows XP must be on C: partition.

- before every XP installation, the RAID array and the data must be deleted, then the array created again.

 

I am really happy that RAID works now, even if it was very hard to install it.

[SinCityJet]

There is another possibility to make it easier for everyone:

It is not necessary to compress the SYS-files before copying them into the I386 folder, if the SourceDisksFiles section in the txtsetup.sif looks like this:

 

[sourceDisksFiles]

nvatabus.sys = 1,,,,,,4,4,1,,,1,4

nvraid.sys = 1,,,,,,4,4,1,,,1,4

 

 

Does this skip the "Open a DOS Prompt and assuming..." which makes three different CAB files in step 3?

 

Oh, I see, on Page FIVE of this thread. However, that's not helping me at all... see below.

[SinCityJet]

Ok, after determining that a key phrase "copy to the I386 directory" was missed (despite my copying it above), I followed the instructions. Sadly, Windows saw 2 drives both listed as nvatasys instead of one listed as nvraid. Time to low level format and try again.

 

Hey, it's just another day I'll never get back. :cool:

[arctic-k20]

I would like to thank Cythrawl, Fernando & Cpu-z for this guide - I followed the instructions and on my first try was able to setup win xp with nv raid drivers built in - no issues what so ever.

 

OT: does using a partition on a 2 drive raid 0 setup decrease performance at all? Just curious if i should have left it as one large drive instead of dividing the raid into 2 drives..

[hayjay]

I couldn't get the slipstreamed disk to install.

 

I had initially installed Raid-0 onto 2x seagate 300gb hdd but although booted to XP first and second time, third time was a no-go which I attributed to the fact that I had used to the old drivers as supplied on floppy with the mobo.

 

I followed the procedure here and set it up for unattended install. I had added these NVraid files to a cd with Xp/sp2 slipstreamed which I had made earlier and reburnt to new cd.

Since I could not now boot to raid I decided to reinstall Xp from the new cd with XP/Sp2/NVraid on. Install got to point where XP looks at partitions which I had previously setup as C= 30gb: D= 200gb: E = 370gb: all NTFS.

Next stage went to reinstall xp on C drive and next screen :-

 

"SETUP CANNOT CREATE FOLDER C:"

 

couldnt get past this point, tried reformatting also tried changing to Fat32 to see if it would go but always same message and hung there.

In the end went back to my original Xp/sp2 cd, made another floppy by copying the original floppy and updating all the files with the new ones. this time it installed first time.

Anyone out there know whats going on.? I am sure I followed the instructions to slipstream the nvidia raid drivers to the letter, yet doesnt work for me had to go back to the awkward way of install.

 

A search of Microsoft's Knowledge base came up with nothing useful.

 

hayjay

[LazyBum]

Thanks for the guide, it worked for me flawlessly. On another note, the new Nlite is out, and supports NV RAID :cool: I just did an install with the new Nlite, and slipstreamed SP2, my hotfixes, my NV RAID drivers, all my Nforce drivers, monitor, and 71.89 Nvidia drivers. No manual methods required I did a full unattended install on the system in my sig and it went without a hitch. The only issue with slipstreaming the drivers was that I had to run the 71.89 installer afterwards to get Coolbits 2 to work. The slipstreamed drivers wouldn't work with Coolbits.

[tortie]

Ok, in your WinISO folder you need to make a folder called $OEM$

In that folder create another folder called $1

Then again in that folder another folder called Drivers

Then again in that folder we need another 2 folders, one called IDE and one called RAID.

 

Im not clear on this. Do I make the "drivers" folder inside the "$1" folder or in the "$OEM$" folder?

 

I understand that I need to make the "drivers" folder inside the "$1" folder and the "IDE" and "RAID" folders inside the "drivers" folder, am I right?

[MyDomain]

Hi!

I hope anyone can help me figger this out. I have slipstreamed my nvRaid drivers succesfully thanks to this guide!!! Good job on this guide!

 

But after i installed my windows i saw that the IDE SW-Driver is automaticly installed, but i don't want that.

 

Normally when you install the drivers of nForce in windows, it will prompt you to install it, but ofcourse during the unattended intall it doesn't.

 

So is there a way that i can install my windows with my slipstreamed nvraid drivers, but not install these IDE SW-Drivers :confused:

 

Thanks in advance!

 

P.S.

Anyone who had a blue screen reboot loop, i managed to fix it by looking to all the files i'm supposed to copy to the cd, i forgot to add "nvcchflt.sys" file in the RAID folder. So hope this little info might help some people.

[MyDomain]

No one have a clue?

Because it is suppose to work without this IDE SW-Driver, because you can choose not install it when you run it in windows.

 

Is there maybe a way to leave the IDE-Drivers out and only add the Raid drivers?

[LazyBum]

I was having problems with the SW drivers also, but I'm working fine using them now after changing my IDE settings in device manager. Check out what I did in this thread hopefully it will work for you also.

[MyDomain]

Thanks for the info, but it already did that automaticly...

It is not that i have problems, but i just wanted to prefent it

 

But i got my problem out of the way by using my Sil3114 raid controller that also supports more forms of raid. So thanks anywayz....

 

greatz, MyDomain