Installing Win2K on SCSI drives

[compudog]

I tried this over in the OS forums as well. Maybe even if I were able to create a bootable Win2K floppy would help. I don't know.

HELP! I am installing Win2K on a PC with 2 9.1GB Western Digital Enterprise 10K SCSI drives with an Adaptec PCI 2940UW Controller. The system is an MSI 6199VA Slot 1 mobo with a PIII-550e CPU with 256 MB PC-100 SDRAM.

I have the boot sequence in BIOS set to CDROM, A, C. I have the CD-ROM as the Master on the Secondary IDE Channel. This is the only IDE device (ATAPI). The SCSI Adapter is in PCI slot 1. There are only these 2 drives in the system.

The system starts to boot to the CD-ROM and the setup program just begins. It then freezes with "Setup is inspecting your computer's harware configuration..." And that's it.

Any ideas or suggestions? I went into the Adaptec SCSI (CTRL -A) utility and did a format on both drives. Oh, and the drives are jumpered for SCAM, and the Adaptec Card has SCAM enabled. SHould I manually configure the drive ID's (SCSI 0, SCSI 1). I don't plan on running any RAID. I just want two 9 gig drives with Win2K.

Thanks!

 

[LiLithTecH]

Are you loading the Adaptec SCSI drivers at the beggining of the OS install?

When the message "Windows is detecting new hardware appears, you will see
"Press F6 if you need to install a third party SCSI or RAID driver".

Then load your driver.
You can download the Win2k drivers here:
Adaptec 2940UW driver

 

[WebDude]

You shouldn't need any special scsi drivers. The win2k install disk has the Adaptec scsi drivers, and a lot of the other popular scsi card drivers on it too. Maybe not the latest Adaptec drivers, but certainly everything you need to get the system up and running. You really only need to use the "F6" option if you've got some "less-than-common" scsi card in your system.

Your system sounds pretty much vanilla. There shouldn't be any problems. You will have to put "scsi" in the boot sequence of your bios, if you want to boot from the drive after the initial copying of files to the hard drive in the install. But that shouldn't make you lock up.

I'm interested in the formatting you did of the drives via the Adaptec card. I guess that was a low level formating. That should not have been necessary at all. But I don't think that would have caused any problems, although I'm not sure of that. No one recommends duing a low level format anymore, not unless there are serious hard drive problems that make it necessary.

Do you have an IDE drive laying around, or one you borrow from another machine. If it were me, I would removed the scsi card and drives, put the IDE drive in, and see if you can get past the "detecting ....." phase of the win2k install. If the install still locks up, you have a problem in the system somewhere (mobo, ram, etc.). If the install gets past that point with the IDE drive, you can abort the install (having made no changes to the IDE drive), but you have just narrowed down the problem to the scsi equipment.

WebDude

 

[LiLithTecH]

Unfortunately, Windows is not installed yet so it does not have the Windows drivers available.
You need to load the driver.
This is an ACPI/APM BX based Slot 1 motherboard, not a Fully ACPI compliant motherboard.

WebDude said:

I'm interested in the formatting you did of the drives via the Adaptec card. I guess that was a low level formating

Have you never with booted a Dos bootdisk with the ASPI driver installed to access the Scsi bus?

 

[Trashman]

This may or may not be a solution, but if the SCSI card is in PCI slot #1 and your using a AGP card, I'd stick that SCSI card in a different PCI slot, since the AGP and the PCI slot #1 share resources...that could cause a problem.

 

[Trashman]

Have you never with booted a Dos bootdisk with the ASPI driver installed to access the Scsi bus?

I personally never had to install scsi drivers before install, like Webdude said, boot disk has generic drivers.

 

[foofoo]

from personal experience, you do need to install the adaptec scsi drivers from a floppy in order to install w2k for the adaptec 19160 scsi card and for most modern ones too i'd imagine.
f6 at the beginning and then install the drivers when prompted. this should help. if it still bombs, you have another hardware problem and you should try troubleshooting, perhaps with an ide hd like webdude suggests.
good luck

 

[WebDude]

I run win2k with an Adaptec 29160 controller card. I have reinstalled win2k a number of times, for various reasons (ok, so I crash my system from time to time). I've never had to use drivers on a floppy to get win2k to recognize the scsi controller card and do an install. I used to have an Adaptec 2940UW card, driving a Cheetah 10k (before I upgraded to my current setup), and I never had to use a floppy with scsi drivers on it for that card either. If you look at all the "device drivers" that the win2k installs during the first part of the install process, as they flash or scroll by the bottom of the screen, if you don't get bored by it all, you might notice a line that says "installing Adaptec *&(&(* family set of drivers". If it were necessary to have a floppy with the Adaptec drivers on it to install win2k, I don't have a clue how I was able to do it, on several occasions, without one.

LiLithTecH said:

Quote

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Have you never with booted a Dos bootdisk with the ASPI driver installed to access the Scsi bus?
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I have probably done that sometime in my past, but don't see how it bears on the discussion. Compudog said: "I went into the Adaptec SCSI (CTRL -A) utility and did a format on both drives." I assume he means he opened up the cards bios, with the CRTL-A command at the beginning of boot up, when the scsi card's bios is loading, and that while he was in that bios, he used the "format" command that is accessible within the bios. If that's what he did, then he preformed a low-level format on the scsi drive(s). If he booted off a floppy with the scsi drivers on them, and then formated, then that is another matter. However I took what he said to mean he did it the first way, not the second.

WebDude

 

[compudog]

Excellent suggestions. (I hadn't considered the PCI/AGP issue.) Thanks Trashman. I will attempt to get this rig going tomorrow (11/21) I have tried the IDE drive and have gotten past the point of failure. I'm almost certain it is a SCSI issue. The format I did was from the Adaptec firmware on the 2940UW and it was indeed a low level. Check the thread over in OS to see where I'm going with this. Again, thanks!

 

[gonzo2k]

Not familiar with your board or its BIOS, but if you have SCSI HDDs attached to your SCSI card "C" is wrong in the boot order. Replace it with "SCSI" device and load drivers for card (F6) when installing. C drive should be recognized properly after the F8 part of installation.

Yes, you will need SCSI driver for 2k on a floppy.


Just read your other post-guess my advice is not very helpful!:frown: