XP Stuck in Endless Reboot

[Gamingphreek]

The XP startup screen will appear. The bar will go around a couple times and instead of booting into WINXP it will reboot. It does this over and over and over again.

-Kevin

 

[Gamingphreek]

I fixed it. The driver disc i downloaded was FAR too old.

I have to install Win 2000 first and just had one quick question.

Is it normal to see both independant discs, yet one has the full size. I installed the RAID drivers but when it asked me where to install i got to choose between 2 options. One was the first HDD but the size was 300Gig. One was the second HDD but was the actual 160Gig. Is it normal to see it as two independent drives with one that is the actual striped array?

-Kevin

 

[Gamingphreek]

Arg now i get the msg NTLDR is missing!! This is more trouble than its worth.

-Kevin

 

[xtknight]

Hmm...maybe the NVRAID controller is somehow defective? You haven't change any boot order or added any hard disks/partitioned anything since it worked right? I know I've had horrible luck with the NVIDIA IDE drivers. Make sure you only install the F6 RAID ones.

 

[Gamingphreek]

No because the RAID array is operational. I reloaded the Win 2000 installer and when i got to the part to choose where to install windows it was a mess. I dont know what in the world the setup tried to do when it formatted but i had about 8 things on one drive and then unpartitioned space on the other. Then when i deleted all the partitions on the drive i thought was the RAID drive i somehow ended up with >500GB

This is really starting to piss me off. Why has MS insisted on using this POS Dos based installer???

Also is there anyway for me to reformat this a little easier? I just waited 2 hours for this to finish and i would rather not wait another 2 hours while i try it again.

-Kevin

 

[rasczak]

the reason for the display of twodrives is due to the differences in size. generally you want to raid two drives with the exact same size, in your case, either get another 160gb or 300gb drive. You can partition your 300gb drive to 160gb and 140gb and then raid the 160gb hard drive and the 160gb partition, but i'm not sure how efficient that really would be.

joe

 

[xtknight]

Well, deleting/recreating the array will delete the links to all data on there. Quick format will do the same (format /q). I've never had a quick format take more than a minute. I think it just wipes the partition table and all MFTs. Vista (and most Linux distros today) uses a GUI for install. Not sure why you have two hard disks showing up in XP. The RAID controller should be telling XP it's one drive (unless it's showing the unraided space?)

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: jpbelauskas
the reason for the display of twodrives is due to the differences in size. generally you want to raid two drives with the exact same size, in your case, either get another 160gb or 300gb drive. You can partition your 300gb drive to 160gb and 140gb and then raid the 160gb hard drive and the 160gb partition, but i'm not sure how efficient that really would be.

joe

No they are both 160Gig drives. Instead of, in the Windows Setup, showing up as one they show up as 2 drives. One drive is the 300Gig drive (the RAID). And for some reason the second drive still showed up as the 160Gig drive.

I have an idea to get my Win XP disc working though. I got autofmt.exe. off of my laptop that has XP installed. Ill download PowerISO and ill also create a ISO image of WinXP. Ill edit it with powerISO and add autofmt.exe.

Can someone just tell me the location of it on their CD so i can add it to the right directory.

-Kevin

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: xtknight
Well, deleting/recreating the array will delete the links to all data on there. Quick format will do the same (format /q). I've never had a quick format take more than a minute. I think it just wipes the partition table and all MFTs. Vista (and most Linux distros today) uses a GUI for install. Not sure why you have two hard disks showing up in XP. The RAID controller should be telling XP it's one drive (unless it's showing the unraided space?)

Well WinXP recognized it correctly, Win2000 failed to recognize it correctly.

Ill have to do another full format i think, if this works.

-Kevin

 

[Gamingphreek]

Well i looked and autofmt.exe is still on the CD. For some God unknown reason it refuses to run so i can format my drive in XP, and then it refuses to copy.

-Kevin

 

[Rubycon]

I have NOT been successful at installing Windows 2000 on this system - A8N32SLI which uses the nV controller. Even a single drive (no raid) did not boot. XP (both 32 and 64 bit versions) as well as 64 bit Vista are OK however.

I did not try the silicon image controller though.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: MS Dawn
I have NOT been successful at installing Windows 2000 on this system - A8N32SLI which uses the nV controller. Even a single drive (no raid) did not boot. XP (both 32 and 64 bit versions) as well as 64 bit Vista are OK however.

I did not try the silicon image controller though.

Ah so that is the problem

Well i am not able to format my drive with the win XP disc. My original disc had a scratch which apparently destroyed the files that Windows Setup requires in order to format the drive.

Does anyone know of a utility or something that will format my RAID array so windows doesn't have to?

-Kevin

 

[xtknight]

Try using a Linux LiveCD like Knoppix? It should include the nvraid module necessary for hard drive operations.

I can tell you what to do once you're there. Do you have any data you care about on the system right now or is this a new system? You could take out all hard drives containing data and then we could just destroy whatever data we want without worrying.

I'll be back in a couple hours...

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: xtknight
Try using a Linux LiveCD like Knoppix? It should include the nvraid module necessary for hard drive operations.

I can tell you what to do once you're there. Do you have any data you care about on the system right now or is this a new system? You could take out all hard drives containing data and then we could just destroy whatever data we want without worrying.

I'll be back in a couple hours...

Lol no everything was completely erased (including the partitions)

I can try using my SUSE linux disc to format and then install WinXP on the newly formatted drive.

-Kevin

 

[Gamingphreek]

Well im downloading all 700MB of knoppix right now. Are you sure that it supports NVRAID?

Its going to take 3 hours so if you think of something post it. More than likely ill find it.

-Kevin

 

[xtknight]

Unfortunately no I'm not sure if it supports NVRAID.

But it does say:
#
# Detection of onboard IDE-Raid Controllers and raid disk components

So let's hope so.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: xtknight
Unfortunately no I'm not sure if it supports NVRAID.

But it does say:
#
# Detection of onboard IDE-Raid Controllers and raid disk components

So let's hope so.

Haha, ok. Well im trying something else in the meantime. Im using a Dell WinXP recovery CD. Hopefully that will format the drive for me. Then after it manages to format it for me, i can restart and install with my XP disc

Ill be suprised if it works lol.

-Kevin

Edit: All i need is to somehow get the drives formatted with some sort of Filesystem that Windows can recognize. After that im fine.

WOAH ITS ACTUALLY FORMATTING IT Very v-e-r-y slowly though lol. And whats more it recognizes it as X MB on Disk 0 at Id1 on bus 0 on NVRAID [MBR] This will take a couple hours to format so ill let you guys know when it is done.

-Kevin

 

[xtknight]

If the hardware RAID is too much trouble there's always software RAID (which can even perform better than these fake hardware implementations in lots of cases). Any Linux can do it and I think XP can stripe (dynamic disk?), but I'm not sure about the latter.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Well this is a full fledged Hardware RAID-0. 64KB stripe sizes and everything. By fake i assume you mean lacking dedicated RAM on a controller card.

After this finish formatting i plan on just cutting the power before it starts copying files. That wont corrupt the format that it just completed will it? Or should i just let it copy the files and then go from there?

-Kevin

 

[Gamingphreek]

Hey it worked. The Dell disc formatted the computer. I cut power and then told WinXP to replace the odd files that got copied. Im in the GUI portion of windows setup right now and it looks like all 305GB is there.

Thank you SO MUCH for all the help and suggestions guys.

-Kevin

EDIT: NEVERMIND. Now it just loops. Windows begins to start up (Black screen with bar going across) and then it just reboots. And then next time it asks me how i want to boot up and i tried safe mode, i tried last known good configuration, i tried normal; every single one of them reboots.

Im just going to reinstall the files overtop of the ones that are on there and hopefully it will work then. This 2 hour job is taking up my entire day!

 

[Gamingphreek]

SON OF A B****

Now all it does it reboot over and over and over and over. It wont boot into windows. I dont know what to do... im about to put my foot through this computer though

-kevin

 

[Gamingphreek]

Bump can anyone help me?

 

[Bozo Galora]

I always start from the beginning:
Boot to floppy and run memtest 86+
Run drive manuf HDD test floppy (DFT) for bad sectors/directory tree, on both drives
Reset CMOS
Run 1 stick Ram - up the voltage a bit also
Do not use USB anything, esp KB or mouse, or cordless KB/mouse
Use HDD low level format utility (zero fill)
http://www.ariolic.com/activesmart/low-level-format.html

 

[Gamingphreek]

Well i know that both HDD's are fine, and everything else is fine. This computer was running fine, and i ordered another HDD because i got a TV card for it (Low space). So i know the RAM, and HDD's, and USB devices are good.

However, the low-level format is an option do you think it will pick up the RAID array or will it more than likely see 2 independent drives?

-Kevin

 

[Gamingphreek]

Ok it still doesn't work (POS). I have to ideas:

A. Software RAID-0. Is there any disadvantage in letting Windows Stripe my HDD's? The only one that i can see is that i have to create a seperate partition for Windows itself (Which i have heard is actually just good sense in the first place)

B. Switch completely over to Linux. Ok, i am considering this but i need to know that i will be able to connect to my College's domain, i need to know that i will be able to play my games on there (Battlefield 2, Doom III).

Right now i am leaning much more towards the software RAID-0 option.

-Kevin