I think im going to go mad!! HELP - RAID setup on XP

[JOhnZXR]

Hi,
ok I have seen only one other person with this problem, that was here -
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=27&threadid=1323219&enterthread=y
but my problem seems to be different.

I am trying to install XP Professional on my new computer. It has 2x160GB hard drive configured as RAID 0. No probs with the RAID configuration that all went fine, the southbridge chipset is the VIA VT8237 and supports 2 SATA drives

So I start to install XP from the CD, as the first blue screen comes up I press f6 to install a 3rd party raid driver. Nothing happens, it just ignores my f6 press and I never get the option to select my drivers from the floppy drive.

So this is what I have tried so far;
Checked the keyboard works; works fine in the BIOS, check the f6 key works. My BIOS allows you to save different BIOS profiles, the shortcut key is f6, this works fine.
Tried a USB keyboard - no joy, tried a different ps2 keyboard - no joy
tried a different floppy drive (as mentioned on the other thread)
tried in 3 different computers - always exactly the same it ignores the f6 keypress.
Just after the press f6 message in XP setup is the "press f2" to start from a recovery disk. This works fine, I press f2 and straight away it responds asking me for a disc.

I saw on the the other thread there is a way to incorporate your drivers onto the XP CD by making your own CD, I could do this I spose, but it seems like an awful lot of messing around for something that should work no probs.

Can anyone shed any light? please help im going mad!!! :|

 

[huesmann]

Are you able to boot using, say, a Win98 boot disk off the floppy? That would confirm that the floppy is working in your system.

Also, your RAID drivers aren't hidden in a subfolder on the floppy disk, are they? The F6 load system doesn't like that, it wants your INF files to be in the root directory.