WinXP users utilizing HPT372, I have a question for you...

[Megatomic]

Another night and another question from me about this HPT372 controller. I did search the forum to see if this was addressed already and it wasn't so here goes:

I am using an Abit KR7A-RAID with the HPT372 controller onboard. The HPT372 is providing the ATA133 channel for my ATA133 drive and is not setup as a RAID array. The operating system I use is WinXP Pro. Fresh install of the board and the OS yesterday. So today I get the drivers and OS tweaked just the way I wanted them and I go to create a restore point. Strange thing though - I got an error that said that restore was unable to create the restore point and that I should restart windows and try again. I do so. Same error again. Then I check to see if there are already restore points stored for me. There aren't. And WinXP SP1 setup said it was creating a restore point...

So I was confused. I go into the control panel, open system.cpl and go to the System Restore tab. I went first to the storage drive that I have in my system that sits on the Via Primary IDE channel. When I turned off restore on that drive, it gave me a similar error as before but it did turn off restore for that drive ( D: ). Then I tried the same thing with the C: drive. I get the error the D: drive gave me but was unable to turn off restore. Not good.

I have no idea what is going on. I suspect that WinXP System Restore won't talk to drives that are on the HPT372 controller though I have no idea why that might be. I have never had any difficulty with the System Restore feature before. Does anyone out there have any ideas as to why this is going on and how I might fix it?

Thanks for any help. 🙂

 

[stonecold3169]

Are you using the default drivers for the hpt372? If you are, I HIGHLY recommend going to highpoint's webpage and downloading the bios/driver pack (their drivers page itself is out of date. On my HPT370, transfer rates on my drive went from 29mb/sec throughput to 49, a drastic jump. Plus, perhaps you need to have the real driver installed to disable that recovery. Good luck!

 

[Megatomic]

Thanks for the reply stonecold3169, I had forgotten about this thread already 😱. When I got home from work the other morning I flashed the bios on the motherboard which updated the BIOS of the HPT372. I then used the latest drivers from Highpoint and then installed the WinXP SP1 patch again. I am not sure which of those things fixed my problem but System Restore now works.

I must have been brain dead when I couldn't figure this out before. 🙂

 

[Technonut]

You were not "Brain Dead" 🙂 It appears that SP1 or the current HP drivers addressed this issue. From Paul's ABIT FAQ:

Why does System Restore not work under Windows? For some reason the driver file c:/windows/system32/drivers/hptpro.sys prevents the System Restore utility under Windows XP from functioning. You can test this by trying to create a restore point - Windows will say it is unable to do this. This can be resolved by using driver version 2.32 or later (for the HPT370 or HPT372 controller) or 1.21 or later (for the HPT374).

If using the later driver does not help, the problem can be easily resolved by simply renaming hptpro.sys to hptpro.old.sys. System Restore will then work correctly and there is no change in stability or performance of your RAID array. It remains unclear what this driver file actually does, but it seems unimportant.

In the highly unlikely event that renaming this file renders your machine unbootable (this has never been reported!) you can always rename the file back to hptpro.sys by booting off your Windows CD-ROM, hitting F6 to install the Highpoint drivers off a floppy, and hitting R to repair the installation using the Windows console. Use "CD WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS" to go to the correct directory and then "RENAME HPTPRO.OLD.SYS HPTPRO.SYS" to rename the file back to the original. Your machine can then boot as before.

Renaming this file has also been reported to solve stuttering problems in certain 3D games.

 

[Megatomic]

Hmm, I had no idea it was such a big issue. I searched AT forums for other users having this problem and didn't find any references within the past 90 days. I'm glad it got fixed so easily now. 🙂