Abit KT7 RAID and Windows NT installation help needed.

[progiciel]

Hi, here's the situation: I have an IBM 75GXP as boot disk connected to the RAID controller on my Abit KT7. The primary partition is Win98, fat32. There's unformatted space, that I reserved on purpose to install WinNT 4. I boot from the CD, press F6 when detecting the hardware, then I hit S to install the additional drivers for the RAID controller. Windows reads the floppy disk and I choose the controller for NT4. I continue the installation, Windows loads a bunch of drivers and I'm finally presented with a window with the devices that were detected: the cd-rom and my old ide drive. I hit S again, and again specify the driver for the RAID controller, but this time windows says that there's no such controller or device installed. Therefore I'm stuck, don't know how to make windows recognize the raid controller in order to continue with the installation. Somebody suggested that maybe it's because the primary partition is FAT32 and NT doesn't recognize it. However, I tried installing NT on my old 6G drive, all FAT partitions, and even then the RAID controller is not recognized. Any ideas?

Thanks a lot.

 

[progiciel]

^

 

[Mutilator]

You need to put your main hard drive onto one of the regular IDE ports first... then install NT... then once NT is installed you should be able to install the hpt370 drivers. After that you should just be able to move your hard drive back over to the raid controller and boot from it.
If that doesn't work I suggest you try to get it setup so your boot hard drive is on a regular IDE port.

 

[progiciel]

Like I said, I also used my old 6G connected to the standard IDE port as primary boot drive, but even then the NT setup doesn't see the RAID controller. As a matter of fact, I guess NT should recognize the controller even if it doesn't have any disk attached to it, right?

Thanks.

 

[Dameon]

what drivers are you using? The default ones on floppy would NEVER work for me, had to overwrite them with the one's from Highpoint's website...

 

[Dennis Travis]

What Mutilator is saying is correct. You have to start with the IBM drive on the regular controler first and completely install NT 4.0. After that boot into NT and then try to install the driver for the RAID card from within NT 4.0. I had the same exact problem installing on my system with an ASUS CuBX and it's separate CMD UDMA-66 controler with either with either NT or 2k. I had to plug the drive that NT or 2k was to install on into the regular Intel controlers and completely install 2k or NT then after the intall boot into 2k or NT and then install the CMD driver. After that you move the IBM drive back to the RAID controler and it should boot right up. It should work just fine if you do it in that order.

 

[progiciel]

I'm using the ones that came on the floppy disk. So you're saying I should get the ones on the highpoint website?

Thanks.

 

[Mutilator]

When you turn on your computer and that highpoint bios screen comes up make sure to take note of the series of numbers at the end of the first line... you'll need to know the bios version before you can download the correct driver off the highpoint website. I believe there are 2 official versions and 1 beta version.

 

[progiciel]

I just downloaded the latest drivers from highpoint's, here's what the readme file says:

HPT370 has been designed to let you add additional high performance
device(s) to your current computer system, your computer must have the
Windows NT 4.0 operating system already installed.

So I guess there's no way to have NT recognize the controller at installation, first you have to manage to get NT installed and then install the drivers as you guys indicated... what a disapointment.

 

[Mutilator]

It's only really a minor inconvience unless you frequently change operating systems like me...
Nothing like a good format & OS change every now and then.. lol