Can I slipstream RAID driver into Windows Setup?

[BCinSC]

In Microsoft's infinite wisdom, 3rd party drive controller drivers can only be loaded from A: during setup or repair.

On similar tangent, but opposite direction, can I remove the numerous drivers I know I don't have from Windows Setup?

 

[ribbon13]

http://msfn.org/articles.php?action=cat&acid=1

Very good.

http://gosh.msfnhosting.com/part1.htm

also very good.

 

[MrControversial]

Well, it's very easy to f*ck this process up. I tried it and made myself a nice WinXP coaster. I had to end up cannibalizing a floppy drive from an old PC. You might have to do the same.

 

[BCinSC]

Most Excellent!!! You rock.

 

[ribbon13]

Thank you. Glad to be appreciated. Lots of aholes in OT giving me crap about my PPD. When most of its from helping people like you. ^^

 

[Celeryman]

Might I also suggest this possibility: nLite

It is supposed to give you a good amount of control over all areas of Windows installation. I did happen to try it but there was a bug in it when I did, and it couldn't add the driver to the iso correctly. You can remove almost everything from the windows installation if you wanted to, including IE, WMP, etc. It has a gui that guides you through the process of creating your new Windows install disc.

 

[BCinSC]

nLite is part of ribbon13's link. Great program. I used it to create pre-ISO on small hard disk, sinec this server has no CD either. Setup runs, but craps out, which I've determined is because nLite choose wrong one of the three options for my controller. Manually edited and testing now.

 

[obeseotron]

It's completely possible to do it, I have a disk that can see both my RAID arrays because it loads the nvraid and silicon image raid drivers. It is by no means straightfoward and I burnt at least 3 or 4 coasters before I got it totally working.

Try these: MaxPC Guide
PC Stats Gudie
MSFN (already suggested by someone else) is also good.

 

[BCinSC]

OK, this is all weel and good, but can I simply place the altered i386 directory on a hard drive and run from there, since that system doesn't have a CDRom? I've tried a couple times. It keeps failing to create the temp folders on the first pass, but still restarts into setup, only to blue screen with KMODE_EXCEPTION...... on setupdd.sys.

 

[ribbon13]

I always copy the i386 directory onto a hard drive before hand. and after the first prompt in the graphical direct all requests for the CD to that directory. Never had a situation where I didn't have a cdrom in the system though... can you temporarly hook one up to it?

 

[BCinSC]

Unfortunately, no. It's an HP ProLiant DL320 1U rack mount that didn't come with one (on order) and interface is proprietary (bastards). Since the RAID is the only IDE connection, I can't hook one there either.

 

[BCinSC]

OK, nLite appears to be a great tool, but isn't working in this particular case. I manually altered setup following the various links y'all provided (many thanks) and some logical deductive reasoning and it loaded! Unfortunately, although it could see other drive attached to RAID controller, it couldn't read it for reasons unknown. If I can just get a copy of Win2K loaded on ANY drive, I can hack out the relevant pieces and manually put them onto other drive.

 

[BCinSC]

I'm ready to just shoot myself. I realize now that I could simply force load the driver for the RAID which drive is in non RAID system using Hardware Wizard.