A8V Deluxe.. NEED HELP!!! PLEASE!!!!

[keichan82]

Hi all. Here is my situation:
I had my computer up and running for about 5 months and decided to format and reinstall because my main drive is "F" and I needed to be "C" drive. So I saved all neccessary files on a separate hard drive and formatted. I have 2 Western Digital SATA 74GB Raptors. Both formatted. All that is installed are the Floppy Drive, DVD drive, Nvidia 5200 AGP, and the 2 formatted HD on the Promise controller (the bottom 2 pink ones).
Started it up, go into bios. Set it to Raid Mode in advance. Set up fast track, array 1, raid 0.
Restarted. It recognizes the Raid 0 and shows that it is functional.
Back into bios. Set Boot as 1) DVD 2) Array 1 (hard drives) 3) floppy
Restarted. Run XP setup. All fine but Xp says there are no drives!!!
I tried pressing F6 and putting the Promis Raid Driver but it won't load it!!
I don't know what to do!!!
I been working on this for almost a week!!
I read the thread relating to this and tried all the suggestion but it still don;t work!!!
PLEASE HELP!!!!!
SORRY SO LONG

THANKS!!

 

[mechBgon]

That's the right procedure. Are you sure you're using the RAID-mode driver for the Promise? There's also an IDE-mode driver. After a week, I've got to think you already looked at that, but hey

BTW that is not long at all, very succinct and clear

 

[keichan82]

I tried all the "make disk" but still nothing. I always get to the windows setup.. press F6.. and when asked to insert disk.. I did but nothing happens.. it reads the disk for about 10 secs and then back to the insert disk screen.. I tried all the disk!!! I worked on it for 11 hours today!! AHHH!!

Can someone please link me to the right disk? Maybe I tried the wrong 10 drivers from Asus site..

 

[mechBgon]

it reads the disk for about 10 secs and then back to the insert disk screen

As far as that goes, that would be perfectly normal. It goes back so you can give it as many diskettes as you might have. I take it you did proceed from that point and it still did not see the array?

The other things coming to mind:

1) SATA is inherently evil. I mean, put an 'N' on the end, and what do you have? Yeah.



2) you have an Audigy2. What PCI slot is it in? Try taking it out as a fact-finding step, as well as other PCI cards.

3) You might be better off using the VIA SATA controller anyway, it's not stuffed onto the PCI bus. Consider trying that.

 

[Googer]

Slipstreaming the Promise drivers on to the windows CD works great and eliminates the need for a floppy or pressing f6.

Driver Slipstreaming
http://www.maximumpc.com/how_to/reprint_2005-01-05.html

Service Pack Slipstreaming
http://www6.tomshardware.com/howto/20040908/index.html
http://www.petri.co.il/windows_2000_xp_sp_slipstreaming.htm

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: keichan82
I tried all the "make disk" but still nothing. I always get to the windows setup.. press F6.. and when asked to insert disk.. I did but nothing happens.. it reads the disk for about 10 secs and then back to the insert disk screen.. I tried all the disk!!! I worked on it for 11 hours today!! AHHH!!

Can someone please link me to the right disk? Maybe I tried the wrong 10 drivers from Asus site..

http://www.promise.com/support/download/download_eng.asp
Look at the chip on the Promise (not promis) controller and download the appropriate driver

 

[keichan82]

After about 20 hours of working on it I finally figured it out...
The floppy drive was not working properly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
IM SOOOOO PISSSEEDDDD...

If anyone has a problem in the future when you arrive to the F6 in Windows setup and it doesn't continue even if you have the driver in there... its the floppy..

don;t waste your time like me...

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: keichan82
After about 20 hours of working on it I finally figured it out...
The floppy drive was not working properly!

Ouch. I'm guessing that in the future you'll check things out with a DOS boot disk before moving on to the hard drive and installing the real OS.

Things like this are a learning experience for sure. I know that I've been there...