RAID hang up

[BigLar]

I'm finishing up building an XP MCE box, but am hung up at the OS install:

Hardware:

Apevia X-Qpack Case
OCZ 600XSXS PS
ZOTAC N73PV-Supreme LGA 775 NVIDIA GeForce 7100 HDMI Micro ATX
Retail Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz FSB 800mHz
4 GB of Corsair DDR2 800 RAM
1TB Seagate Barracuda SATA
1TB Hitachi Deathstar SATA
1 LG Blu-Ray-CD-ROM GGC-H20LK SATA
1 multicard reader with ESATA (thereby using all four mobo SATA ports)
1 LG GH22LP20 DVD Burner IDE
Windox XP MCE 2005 (yeah, I know I'm only using 3 GB or RAM!)

The install:

I first set the two HD's up in a RAID 0 in the BIOS. Seems to check out OK.
In starting the XP install, I hit F6 so that, during set up, I get prompted to hit "S" to add additional drivers, but when I do so, I get a statement to the effect that there is no floppy drive (duh!). I've tried to put the CD containing the drivers in the Blu-Ray (SATA), the DVD burner (IDE), and even a USB stick, but every time I get only two choices; either abort the driver install or abort XP setup. Not cool.

I suspect that there may be something else in the BIOS I have to tweak, but I don't know what.

Anybody got any ideas?

Thanks for any suggestions!

 

[mpilchfamily]

You'll have to do it from a USB thumb drive. The drive will have to be set up as a bootable disk and the BIOS needs to be set to boot from USB device.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Do what from a thumb drive? XP's setup F6 driver install only accepts drivers off of a real floppy drive.

 

[BigLar]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
Do what from a thumb drive? XP's setup F6 driver install only accepts drivers off of a real floppy drive.

But then why did the manufacturer provide only a CD?

If I put the drivers on an external USB floppy, would that work?

Does Vista overcome this problem?

 

[Slugbait]

Originally posted by: mpilchfamily
You'll have to do it from a USB thumb drive. The drive will have to be set up as a bootable disk and the BIOS needs to be set to boot from USB device.

You've obviously been successful at this. I thought it wasn't possible. Quote:

Note Mass storage controller drivers can be loaded only from floppy disks by using the F6 key. The F6 key cannot be used to load drivers that are stored on USB flash drives, on USB hard disks, or on other external storage devices.

Please provide better steps for how this is done. It would be of great help to many.

The only other options I'm aware of is to use a USB floppy drive (PITA), slipstreaming with nLite (time-consuming PITA), or plugging in a standard floppy drive (dead-fraking simplistic).

 

[BigLar]

So I guess I'll need to transfer the NVIDIA drivers onto a floppy on another machine and the use Slugbait's idea of just temporarily plugging a floppy in. I'll have to see where I can find a floppy for temporary use.

Seems awfully inelegant...

 

[Slugbait]

Originally posted by: BigLar
Seems awfully inelegant...

NT 5.1 is largely based on NT5. It was released over seven years ago, when PATA still ruled, and all OEM machines still shipped with a floppy drive. With only eight months between the release of the first thumbdrive and the release of XP, there was no way for MS to change the OS to handle the devices for installations (nor any immediate need) on such short notice. I believe there was also an issue that mobo BIOS' of that era would not be able to support it, either.

Works with Vista installs on current hardware, tho'.

 

[BigLar]

OK, I scavenged the floppy from another computer and got all the way through the F6 business, I confidently, CONFIDENTLY I SAY, placed the floppy containing all 1.38 MB of stuff I had copied from the RAID 32-bit XP file, and "pushed da button". Horror of horrors, it said that it could not find some xxx.oem file.

At this point I realized that I had no real idea of what more had to be on that disc (other than it seemed like it needed to be less than 0.06 MB).

Any idea what junk has got to be on that disc?

Per Slugbait's last note, maybe its time to bit the bullet and switch to Vista, which raises one more question. I've got a copy of Vista Business hanging around and I'll be putting in an Asus PHC3-100 Combo card, do I really need the media center features of Vista Home Premium, or would Business with the Asus card be good?

 

[Slugbait]

A copied RAID 32-bit XP file? No, you need the floppy disc that came with your mobo.

 

[BigLar]

No, what came with the mobo was a CD with all sorts of stuff, but three main subdirectories; NVIDIA Chipset, On board, and Utility. The Utility has files for reflashing the BIOS. The On board subdirectory has Realtek Audio and Realtek Lan subdirectories. The Nvidia Chipset has subdirectories 650I, MPC73, and Usb_supplement.

Usb_supplement has two files Chip.ins and Getbios.exe (Doesn't seem too promising).

650I has release notes and large files (with books as the icons) for XP32, XP64, Vista32, and Vista 64

MPC73 has subdirectories called RAID, Vista32, and WinXP32_2K. WinXP32_2K itself has subdirectories Display, Ethernet, HD Audio, IDE, SMBus and SMU and a bunch of set-up files. The RAID subdirectory has subdirectories for each of the four operating systems (XP32, XP64, Vista32, and Vista 64) and a readme.txt that says, "please go the windows device manager and then select the directory of .\Nvidia chipset\MCP73\Raid to install the RAID driver." So I had selected the subdirectory for XP32 and copied it to the floppy, but that's when the lack of the xxx.oem file came up.

I'm kind of sucking wind...

 

[Slugbait]

No, you're not sucking wind. You're giving me pretty good info.

650i? It doesn't appear that Zotac has released a 650i mobo. The manufacturer link for your specific mobo is the 630i.

The "missing" file you need is txtsetup.oem. Extremely important file. The latest updated RAID drivers were released 7/31/08, get the zip file here.

When unzipping, you want the files located under path=Raid\WinXP32_2K\sataraid. Total size is 954K. These are the only files needed to copy to a floppy, and yes there is a txtsetup.oem file in this path.

Forgive me, I've never used an nVidia mobo, so I just assumed a floppy disc would be included (all of my Intel-based boards, including my Bad Axe II, had them). I also assumed downloaded files might have a utility for creating a floppy image.

Hope this helps

 

[BigLar]

I'm giving up on swapping the floppy around and will go to Microcenter to get a new one. The floppy in my old Shuttle is broken anyhow and needs to be replaced.

One curious thing, which I just double checked, is that the CD does label the directory as 650I not 630I. I can't tell from the subdirectories therein whether there is anything funny going on. Did I get something else other than I thought? Was the subdirectory name a typo? Is it 2009? I think its pretty much irrelevant given the downloadable files that Slugbait pointed out.

Anyway, once I get the new floppy, I'll provide an update. Slugbait, your help has been invaluable!

 

[RebateMonger]

Wow. Zotac must have the worst web site(s) ever. There are lots of downloads of RAID drivers, but you have to know what chipset the MB uses. A link on Newegg.com points to this Zotac web page, which says it's an nForce 630i. The downloaded drivers for XP x32, here, are only about 200-300K in size.

 

[BigLar]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
Wow. Zotac must have the worst web site(s) ever. There are lots of downloads of RAID drivers, but you have to know what chipset the MB uses. A link on Newegg.com points to this Zotac web page, which says it's an nForce 630i. The downloaded drivers for XP x32, here, are only about 200-300K in size.

Whoa, another complication! The answer seems to be to download the RAID drivers and give them a try, one by one.

Well, the board was only $40AR...

I'll be getting the new floppy by Sunday at the latest and I'll let you know what happens.

[Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble....]

 

[BigLar]

Progress, but not finished...

Thanks to your help, I got the Raid drivers installed and the 2x1TB RAID 0 array formated. (It took about 4 hours to format!) So I'm going through the Windows XP MCE 2005 install and come up with a request for the XP Professional Service Pack 2 CD to provide the file "asms". This presents two problems:

1. I'm not sure where it is. I've got two install discs for Windows XP MCE 2005 plus a disc labeled "MA2SPOEM_EN" which looks a lot like SP2, methinks, but I haven't found asms on that disc. Am I in the right place?

2. As I'm still in set up, I'm not sure what the drive letter I'm working with is. I popped the CDs in the IDE DVD burner for the installation and it seemed to work OK, but I'm not sure now what the drive letter is.

So I don't know where to put what. Nice, huh? Any ideas?

 

[Slugbait]

1. It's been over two years since I built my MCE box, but if I remember correctly, you are currently using the second CD (which has the MCE stuff) and now you have to put the first CD (which has the Windows stuff) back in again for the OS installation to complete. The MA2SPOEM_EN disc is the Update Rollup 2 for MCE 2K5, knowledge base article KB900325. I have a Gold edition, so I had to download the rollup separately...meaning, you don't need this disc until after booting into Windows.

2. Considering that you're using RAID 0, and if you have no other internal drives, I can only assume the drive letter you're working with on your optical disc is D:\. If you mean your hard drives, the drive letter you're working with would be C:\.

 

[BigLar]

Thanks for the ideas.

I thought I could solve the first question by disconnecting the blu-ray rom and a multicard reader and trying again. Not too much luck, so I rebooted the machine (arrgh!) and fortunately setup restarted pretty much where it left off, but this time saying I should put the source disc in the H: drive. I guess the multiple ports on the card reader (including the esata port?) got counted at installation. So H:\ is OK by me.

I examined the two discs of the install in another computer and noticed that I could not find anything with "asms" on disc 2, but disc 1 had a subdirectory H:\mrmpoem_en\i386\asms, containing a bunch of numerically named files. I put disc 1 into the new machine and typed in that location (but no file name). Unfortunately, nothing.

I noticed in disc 2 that the file H:\CMPNENTS\MEDIACTR\I386 exists, but it seems to only contain a single self-extracting file.

The hunt continues...

 

[BigLar]

WE HAVE IGNITION!

Judicious flipping of CDs in and out, multiple restarts, and futzing in general have gotten the beat alive. Now to begin the fun stuff.

Thanks to all, especially Slugbait, for all teh help.

 

[postmortemIA]

did you use nLite tool to slipstream F6 driver to XP CD-ROM image?

 

[BigLar]

Originally posted by: postmortemIA
did you use nLite tool to slipstream F6 driver to XP CD-ROM image?

No, I'm not quite that sophisticated (though I wish I knew how). I used the brute force method of taking a floppy out of another machine and temporarily hanging it off the new machine to feed the Nvidia RAID drivers (a real PITA).

The real trick was to locate the drivers and get them onto the floppy. The actually drivers I used were downloaded from sites suggested by RebateMonger and Slugbait, not the CD ROM that came with the mobo.

The mobo itself seems pretty good, especially for the money. The only shortfall is that the HDMI output is 720p, so I'll be putting in a cheap ASUS card to get up to 1080p.