xp via raid driver installation insanity

[macxp]

Hi,

Apologies if this is not the correct category- I'm new here....

Here's my drama: I'm fixing a mate's PC after his hard drive crashed. Should just be a simple XP installation as I've done countless times before. But no.

As we all know, when not using a slipstreamed custom XP installation we need a floppy disk with the relevant sata raid driver on it to allow the setup process to recognise a sata hard disk. This is exactly what I want to do- install windows to the SATA hard disk- the only one present in the system. I hit F6 when prompted during the installation and, hey presto, the floppy disk drive accesses and installs the driver. A little bit later I can see the hard drive....so far so good! I then partition the hard disk- 40gb for windows and the rest for everything else. I then format the partition with the NFTS file system.
Now here's where it gets frustrating! The installation starts to copy files to the hard drive and here's where the error pops up. I get the message that the file VIAMRAID.sys cannot be copied. If I skip this file windows starts to boot, shortly followed by the BSOD.

I've created a new floppy driver disk, tried with the latest drivers from VIA, tried a different floppy drive, a different floppy cable, I took out the motherboard battery and used different SATA cables; all with no change to the above. I've also tried slipstreaming the drivers. This doesn't work at all....don't even get to partition or format the drive.

I'm convinced that the hardware is fine, as when I put in another SATA hard drive with windows XP installed everything works as it should and I can happily play with the other drive.

Its a VIA motherboard and chipset with an older Athlon 64 CPU.

I'm fresh out of ideas here, so any suggestions would be appreciated!

Cheers!

 

[rkoenn]

I assume that within the BIOS you did setup the RAID array so that the motherboard treats it that way? That is the only possibility I can come up with. By the way, are you setting up a striped/performance array or a mirrored/redudant array? I had some problems doing a redundant array on an nVidia based motherboard. I thought it would be easier than a striped array but it was somewhat painful instead.

 

[macxp]

Oh, its just setup as a standalone drive. No striping etc....thanks for the thought

 

[rkoenn]

You are not using any of the RAID functionality then, no striping or mirroring? If so then I don't believe you even need to install the RAID drivers. You might want to go into the BIOS and turn off the RAID capability. My experience on numerous installations of XP is that if you are not doing RAID then you don't even have to mess with putting in that driver floppy. XP will install SATA drives without any special drivers. After you get XP installed then you would want to get the specific chipset drivers simply to more efficiently get XP to use the chipsets capabilities but you should be able to get up and running without messing with the floppy.

 

[themisfit610]

Still, running Intel controllers in AHCI or RAID mode does net a bit of improved responsiveness. I would suggest building a custom XP install disc using nLite. It will automagically load the drivers, and you can finally throw that dusty old floppy drive in the trash

Or install Vista, which lets you load drivers off a flash drive, and supports AHCI natively

~MiSfit

 

[macxp]

thanks for the comments....unfortunately the raid drivers are needed. If I don't hit F6 during install then the hard disk isn't visible to set up at all.

Further, its not an Intel controller unfortunately. My other PC is based on an old bad axe motherboard and that does install xp ok without the floppy disk. MSFT seems to back the intel drivers, but but not the VIA....

I've tried slipstreaming the raid/sata drivers with the install.....but it doesn't work. I've tried about 10 times (got a nice stack of new coasters...) and the hard disk doesn't get recognised....I swear I'm gonna go crazy!

 

[boomerang]

After reading the replies the first thing that popped into my head is; are you certain you have the correct drivers? If it doesn't like the file, it may be because it doesn't match the hardware.

What motherboard are you dealing with?

Oh, and welcome!

 

[macxp]

thanks for the comments and welcome.....

I'm fairly sure drivers are the correct ones....I'm definately using the floppy disk that came with the motherboard. I made sure by downloading the latest drivers from VIA and creating a new disk. Another reason why I think they are the correct drivers is because when if I don't hit f6 during installation to install the raid/sata driver the hard disk isn't visible to setup.....The controller on the board is the VT6420/VT8237 - this is what is says on the floppy. I'm not sure what the MB model is right now...will post it later.

I swear I'm going insane here! Why does the driver load ok and let me partition and format the hard disk and then not fail when copying over the driver?? ARRGH!

 

[Tarrant64]

macxp, let me tell you something. I feeeeeel your pain man. I went through the same thing with XP and some via drivers. When I get home I'll try to find some of the drivers I had to use to get it to work. This only happened with the WD Raptor drives (74gb specifically).

 

[VirtualLarry]

Maybe the inf or txt file in the driver disk is faulty? It wouldn't be the first time that Via screwed up their driver package. Try downloading an older version of the drivers, and see if that works.

 

[Sandan]

I just had almost the identical problem. What I had to do was go into the bios before installing xp and identify the drive as RAID. Then when I installed xp when prompted to hit f6 I loaded the SATA drivers. For whatever reason with my board (Asrock 939 dual sata2) the SATA drivers are also for raid setups. Once I did this it let me in to finish the install. But I spend 2 days trying to figure this out and kept getting errors during install and couldn't progress.