GA-7VRXP & Raid ... no dice

[squiddley]

Can anyone help with the fault "Fasttrack.sys" causing XPPro installation to fail?

Despite the manual being wrong about the promise chip's default setting (RAID vs IDE), I managed to get a RAID0 established, FDISKed and formatted. However, XP setup simply hated the promise RAID drivers.

I found and copied the Promise 20276 XP drivers from the CD to a floppy, and also a second floppy with "updated" drivers from the gigabyte website. During CD boot in WP setup, I pressed F6 to install 3rd party drivers, and was prompted to press "S" and insert disk. no problem. When I selected the relevant driver listing, setup then reported the above, and died.

Have tried about a dozen times (no joke), thinking I must have done something wrong, but can't for the life of me figure it out. Now have the rig set up with good old IDE and no RAID, but I'd like to be able to sort it out...

TYIA!

 

[forbesandrew]

Ugh. Don't tell me this. I just ordered one of these boards because of all of hte problems I was having with the MSI KT3 Ultra-ARU not recognizing drives period.

I just want to use the promise controller in ATA mode.

I will let you know how it goes for me tomorrow when I receive the board.

Regards,
Andrew

 

[squiddley]

Hi

If you want to use the Promise chip for IDE, then you won't have any problems. Be sure that the BIOS setting for the Promise chip is set to "IDE", or connected devices won't be detected. Also, you'll need to change the boot sequence. Also, there are some glaring inconsistencies in the manual. Basically "default settings" are not always default. Nothing major, just that if you're an RTFM person like me, you take it as gospel and it makes troubleshooting all the harder/longer FYI my board and manual are revision 1.0 and the BIOS version is F6. I know that there's a 1.01 now as the second batch come out, so there may be some improvements.

Be sure to use 80 pin IDE bales if you want better than ATA33 performance, because the Promise chip will tell you off for using 40 pin ones Also, I forgot to change the jumpers on the HD & CDRW from master/master to master/slave, and BOTH devices were undetected by the chip.

Lastly, be sure to make use of the dual BIOs, and backup your spare one once everything's sorted out. The Gigabyte Utility Manager (GUM) is a pretty useful TSR that gives quick and easy access to the @BIOS utility, which in turn will let you back up your current BIOS to disk and/or do a live update of BIOS. If/when it works, it'll be a nice change from DOS flashing.

Cheers.

 

[CoDerEd]

I have Promise also on my MSI 845 and it runs great, so it's not a Promise-Win XP problem.

probably it's a hardware problem which is nothing you can do.
my secondary RAID connector is also died and MSI tell me to RMA
the board, but i'll just keep it this way since it works with only the
primary RAID[ i set the HD as master and slave instead 2 master on two connector]

If it doesn't work at your gigabyte then you should return it.
i'm pretty sure it's a hardware problem.

 

[squiddley]

Ack!

Thanks for that ed.. bummer. Will chance my arm in town at the weekend, but cross fingers something is wrong with my XP instead Would a defective Promise chip still work fine and create the RAID array (which it did) , allow XP to format fully (did) and still work properly as an ATA controller (does) ??

TYIA