Have you seen my second question?

Sorry, I missed the second question. I created the SATARAID folder using the method mentioned in step 1 and 2 under Windows Server 2003 at the beginning of your post. Then I used that folder for NLite single driver integration. Then I integrated other pnp drivers. Is that what you mean?

Thanks for the details.
I really have no idea, why you got a BSOD by using my method according post 1 of this thread and no BSOD by using the F6/floppy method.
Is it possible, that you used different drivers from different packages? There are two nForce packages v. 6.69, one 32-bit for W2k3 and one 64-bit for XP and W2k3. Are you sure, that you took the 32-bit ones?

Do I need to integrate the sata_ide folder too for 32bit WinXP? I follow your guide in 1st post and encountered the same problem as before. But the 6.7 package doesn't come with a PATARAID folder.

Anyway, I have make another slipstream with sata_ide integrated but haven't tried it out yet.

NVIDIA has renamed the "PATARAID" folder to "LEGACY". So if you can find a LEGACY folder, just take this one. It is neither necessary nor useful to integrate the SATA_IDE folder, unless you rename some files and some INF entries.
For details look into the first post of this thread. It is always up-to-date.

CU
Fernando

Thanks for maintaining this thread, my first experiences with nVidia raid and WinXP install were rather painful. I think it's a good help for many users.

I was wondering about the different versions ...

from the LEGACY folders:

nforce 6.70 AMD
nvraid.inf: DriverVer=08/18/2005,5.10.2600.0552
nvatabus.inf: DriverVer=08/18/2005,5.10.2600.0552

nforce 6.85 AMD
nvraid.inf: DriverVer=08/18/2005,5.10.2600.0552
nvatabus.inf: DriverVer=08/18/2005,5.10.2600.0552

Vista beta:
nvraid.inf: DriverVer=08/18/2005,5.10.2600.0552
nvatabus.inf: DriverVer=05/01/2006,5.10.2600.0667

This suggests that the Vista beta driver package contains an updated nvatabus driver, the rest is identical anyway. Anyone know more? nVidia isn't exactly very clear in their driver releases I find.

I've got a question. Are RAID drivers updated when you install the latest nForce drivers after loading the OS or is the RAID driver you pick at install the only one that is ever used until you reinstall the OS with a newer RAID driver?

Also, what if any difference is there between the 9.34 Vista beta drivers and the regular 9.34 international drivers? I had already downloaded the regular 9.34 nForce driver package to install but i had to go and get the other Vista beta .zip package you linked to for the RAID integration since it has the Legacy folder and i guess thats what i need to use for SATA RAID integration in nLite right? Is there any difference in RAID driver versions used between the two packages? I'm going to install the regular 9.34 nForce drivers once i get Windows XP loaded.

The Vista nForce driver package contains not only a new NVATABUS, but a new NVRAID driver too (both versions: 5.10.2600.667). I don't know where you got the above information about the NVRAID.INF from, but this is not true.
The IDE, Audio and SMBus drivers off the new Vista nForce driver package are compatible to Windows XP and can be used for the intagration by nLite. I have already added this possibility into my guide (first post of this thread).

No, you can update the Raid driver later (update is done after the reboot).
Don't take the regular 9.34 driver package, because they don't have a LEGACY folder. Take the Vista 32-bit package. It contains the same drivers, but have a complete LEGACY folder with all necessary files.

From the posts i'm reading its looking like the regular 9.34 drivers dont install properly on pre-nForce 5 chipsets and certain parts like the IDE driver aren't installed.

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=70601

This guy here released a new driver remix of the 9.34's that supposedly addresses this issue and he also fixed the folder structure to include the Legacy subfolder.

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=70757

That is why I suggest to take the new Vista nForce package (downloadable here) instead of the "regular" 9.34 one.
Those "unified" Remix driver packages are modded and not designed for a driver integration, but a driver installation after the end of the complete OS install. You may try them for the integration of SataRaid drivers at your own risk.

Fernando,

Just wanted to say what an excellent job you do keeping us updated with these!

But just out of curosity, I realize you mention this newest chipset driver package is compatible with nForce4 chipsets and some may use it "who always want the newest drivers," but...

What, if any benefits/advantages does this latest package provide to Win XP or is it merely an upgrade path for Vista users that also happens to be compatible with XP?

The 9.34's contain new drivers such as new NVATABUS and NVRAID drivers. New drivers normally mean fixes and improved performance. Its always a good idea to have the latest chipset drivers installed if you're looking for top performance.

NVIDIA has developed new nForce drivers for Vista and nForce5 chipsets, but these brandnew SataRaid drivers are backwards compatible to Windows XP and all earlier nForce chipsets (nForce2/3/4).
Each user should decide himself, if he wants to try the new drivers. I have tested them on my nForce4 array and they are working like a charme.

I looked at the 9.34 Vista pack and it has no Ethernet drivers included and then i looked at the other 9.34 international drivers i had downloaded before and they have no Audio drivers. I'm going to try the 9.34 Unified Remix bundle i linked to before because it has all the drivers packaged together and see if i can't integrate the SATARAID drivers with it.

This was his file structure:

That was a good idea from NVIDIA, because the Ethernet drivers off the "regular" 9.34 package don't work with nForce3 and nForce4 chipsets.

There are more modded "unified" nForce chipset driver remixes in the net, which are based on the 9.34 driver package.
Look here:
http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/meis-nware...ix-vt66280.html
and here:
http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/nforce-934...64-vt66306.html

Are you sure about that? With the "regular" 9.34 package the Ethernet driver is suppost to be for NF3/4/5. Others didn't seem to have a problem with the Ethernet driver.

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread...?t=70601&page=3



Yeah, those are the same two guys off nvnews.

Try it and find it out yourself.
By the way: You won't find the new Ethernet drivers off the "regular" 9.34 package within the Remix packages we talked about. I am sure, that those guys would have taken them, if they really are fully compatible to nForce3 and nForce4 mobos.

@Fernando 1. Yes, don't know myself where I got the version info, I must have been in outer space. Both are indeed 5.10.2600.0667.

No I used the 32 bit drive in either case. I once tried to use the 64 bit driver(by mistake) and it told me that they were not compatible.

Please give us some details about your config (mobo, chipset, sort of hdd's etc.) and explain, what exactly you have done during nForce SataRaid driver installation (F6 method and nLite integration).

In the remix he is using the beta 60.15 Ethernet driver. It says customized though so he obviously changed something in the .ini to support nForce3/4. The Ethernet driver may not work on all nForce boards though.

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=70757

Well how do you do Server 2003???? It has 2 cds. how do you get both of them. i want to install server 2003 on a dual 200Gb maxtor IDE raid 0 setup.

Well basically I have been getting error 51 (error during paging operation on disk ...) in the event log of my computer for a while now which I have not been able to fix. Amazingly this fixed it. integrating the lagacy XP drivers from the 6.7 package worked a charm. My computer was also locking up with no bluescreen or event logs mainly during io intensive tasks like games (obivion). This was fixed simply by integrating these drivers. I really don't understand.

note: I have a raid 1 setup for my data but my system drive is not in a raid array.

Windows Server 2003 has only 1 CD.
What you certainly mean is Windows Server 2003 R2. The installation should work if you just integrate the nForce SataRaid drivers into CD 1 (= bootable CD).

Ok i am trying to integrate raid drivers into server 2003(xp home has this problem too) And so i followed the directions, and copied all the files according to the directions etc etc, and used Nlite and integrated the drivers and removed the oem raid/scsi drivers, and made an iso, burned it slow, and all that, and when i go to install, they will go perfectly fine up until after the formatting of the hard drive, when it actually installs files, It keeps saying files are missing, and so ive tried putting the original disc in there and getting the file from there, but that doesnt have it either, and its not just one or two files, its probly 20 to 30 files, and i end up just skipping em, and of course when it gets done says theres an error and to restart setup. WTF IS WRONG WITH MICROSOFT?!?!! im trying to install windows on a dual 200gb maxtor raid 0 setup, and using normal discs and putting drivers in with F6 it just installs and then continuously reboots blah blah blah am i doing something wrong? or is windows just ****t?!?! i have already wasted about 2 dozen cds with no success. Someone HELP!!!!

Where did you read this? You should not remove these drivers, when you are integrating the nForce SataRaid drivers.
Always the same or each time different files?
Is your CDROM drive, your RAM, your PSU and your W2k3 CD ok? Do you have an overclocked system? Which SATA mode are your Maxtor hdd's using? If SATA2 is enabled by hdd jumper, do you have a mobo with nForce4 chipset? If yes, did you flash the necessary Maxtor firmware for a successful work with nForce4 chipsets?

Note: Don't press F6 during setup, if you have inserted a CD with integrated nForce SataRaid drivers.

@Fernando 1:

QUOTE

Please post your experience with this method - successfull or not - into this thread.

Succesfully tested configurations using nLite:

• integration of LEGACY folder drivers from package 6.70 with RC7 and RC8
• integration of LEGACY folder drivers from package 6.85 with RC7 and RC8

Raid BIOS version v. 4.84
Mainboard: Asus A8N-SLI Premium
2 x Samsung SP1614C, 160GB, SATA 150 in Raid 0
Operating system: Windows XP home SP2, Windows XP home SP2 with slipstreamed hotfixes until Mar 06, Windows XP home SP2 with Ryan VM update pack 2.06.

I prepared a build with the beta drivers as well, but haven't tested it yet.

Nice thread Fernando! Especially the last update couldn't be clearer and simpler. I remember fighting a LOT with my first SATA drivers integration attempts. This should really be a BIG help

@i_know_tim:


Interesting. May I ask what drivers you used before and what motherboard you have?

By the way: I had seemingly random freezes for a while too. They actually turned out to be caused by a defect memory bank. But until I discovered this (because the memory bank finally was kind enough to fail consistently, which made it easy to detect), But I was suspecting buggy drivers as well.Are you 100% sure it's stable now?

@ Blub and i_know_tim:

Thank you very much for your posts. That really reassures me.

CU
Fernando

the drives are IDE, not sata, sorry. and in the nlite program it says if you are integrating updated files you should remove the old ones. and i got it to work, i didnt pay attention to if it was the same files each time, but i just skipped every file and it worked. Yes my burner and ram and all that are fine, no o/c. Sytem is:
ECS Elitegroup NF4 soc 754 motherboard
Sempron 2800
PNY 1 gb pc3200 DDR
Enermax 470w 2.0 psu
ATI X550 256mb vid card
micro advantage dvd rw and Sony dvd rom
disc is brand new just downloaded it from microsoft. (180 day trial)
and of course dual 200gb Maxtor Ide hdds
and no i didnt do anything but create a raid array using F10 , and setting bios settings to allow raid, and then installing windows. I know not to use f6 using a disc with drivers integrated.

Fine, that you got it to work.
Maybe it were the CAT files, which were missed by the W2k3 setup. As these files aren't really necessary (because the nForce Pata/SataRaid drivers are not WHQL certified), it doesn't matter at all, that you skipped them.

Does this solution also apply to nforce 430 chipsets?

I have just entered the fun that is NVRaid chipsets!

Before I found your post I tried most combinations of most things and eventually decided to boot the machine using a standard IDE drive and then see if I could access the raid set up afterwards (non boot) using the windows set up kit provided on the website.

In short I gave up on using a bootable raid and now just want to use the 1+0 raid array on 4 250gb drives as a file serving system within win XP.

Once I try to install any drivers for the setup at all the system hangs at reboot as it normally does whenever you attempt to use the NV raid.

My question is what drivers do I install to avtivate my N4 chipset raid controller from within windows as a non-bootable array?!

Any Ideas? Trying endless combinations is driving me nuts!

Many Thanks,

Dave

Motherboard : FoxConn NF4SLI7AA

Chipset : NVIDIA Crush 19+MCP-04

Yes, my guide (first post of this thread) works with nForce 410/430 chipsets too.
The only problem is, that the special nForce 430 chipset driver packages offered by NVIDIA do not contain a LEGACY subfolder, which contains the needed NVATABUS.INF file.
My suggestion: Take the LEGACY subfolder from the package you get here.

Try the new x86 package you get here. Run the package and install just the nForce Raid drivers.

I am glad I found this site but am still having problems. I tried building an install using NLite and the driver instructions for Server 2003. I am still getting the blue screen Hard Error C0000221.

K8N-DL
2 x Opteron 246
2 x Cosair 1gb ecc registered
2 x Seagate baracuda SATA2 250 gb hard drive raid 1
Bios 1008
NVidia Bios 4.84

I copied the files as described into the SATARAID folder.
In NLite I selected the integrate drives and create ISO options
I selected the drived as textmode (I selcted one and it picked both).
After creating the drivers I watched that they were loaded during the pre gui load of windows, then got blue screened after the starting windows prompt.

I tried the same steps and selected unattended install, but didn't full in any options, just made sure the load OEM was checked. This didn't help.

I wasn't sure what this meant?
"To make the driver package suitable for the integration you have to unzip it"

Any help/suggestion would be greatly appreciated.

Which driver package (version number) did you use?
Is your original W2k3 CD and your CD burner ok?
Did you use Nero for burning the CD?
What you have done, seems ok.
When you have downloaded the chipset driver package, you don't see any subfolders, drivers and INF files. So you have to unzip the package, before you are able to integrate any subfolder and INF file.

I used 6.69 SATARAID and 6.7 to copy the extra files from as per the instructions.

The CD is appears ok because I can burn an iso without adding drivers and install Windows 2003 on the same hardware configuration without raid enabled.

After some new tests I detected, that the brandnew nForce SataRaid drivers designed for Vista Beta2 (IDE drivers v. 667) are working flawlessly with W2k, XP and W2k3 and all the various nForce chipsets (inclusive the old ones). Try them!

@ all users with nForce SataRaid systems:
As a consequence of my new tests I recommend generally to take the brandnew SataRaid drivers v. 667 from here. This package contains the same SataRaid drivers as the "official" chipset package 9.34, but is much easier to be integrated, because it has a LEGACY subfolder.
It seems, that this new IDE driver package is not only the best choice for W2k, XP, W2k3 and Vista, but also fully compatible to all known nForce chipsets!

what about those with just one drive but still have the same restarting problems? do i just use the same method if i dont have raid?

If you have one or more nForce Sata drives, but no Raid array, you should not use the method of the first post.
Nevertheless you can integrate the nForce Sata driver into a bootable CD by doing the following:
1. Download the suitable nForce chipset driver package according my suggestion within the first post of this thread.
2. During the driver integration section of nLite you can integrate the SATA_IDE subfolder of the suitable package as PnP driver. Don't integrate any TEXTMODE driver (neither LEGACY nor SATARAID) and don't press F6 during the install!

CU
Fernando

Fernando1, thanks. just tried it using single driver and selecting sata_ide "nvata" and still the same thing happened.. it was pnp not textmode aswell(not that u get a option to change it)
i downloaded the same file from ur link aswell.
ahhh

It is not easy to help without any further informations:
Which is the name of your mainboard and what sort of nForce chipset are you using?
Which OS are you going to install?
Are you able to install the OS off the original (not nLited) CD without pressing F6?
Do you use a Maxtor Sata2 hard drive disk? If yes, have you updated the firmware or jumpered to Sata1?

Okay I'm running out of ideas so here goes the desperate cry for help.

I have a windows XP MCE with sp2 DVD. I've nlited this to add the nvidia raid drivers (in text mode) from the legacy directory (Ive tried a couple of versions but most recently 6.85 as per page 1 of this thread), nothing else is integrated (no addons, other drivers, nothing at all).

When I install from my nice shiny new DVD the text mode install works fine, the system reboots, the GUI install phase starts and completes. The screen changes to a basic light blue (not the BSOD, more a desktop blue) and the mouse cursor is still visible. The system then freezes completelly (the mouse cursor will not move).

If I manually reboot the box it will pass all the usual BIOS stuff and then BSOD with error code 7b.

I've also tried this with the legacy raid drivers as well as the bus and ethernet drivers to the same outcome.

Any ideas as to what this might be would be appreciated.

My system is

Athlon 64 chip
1GB ram
1 * 120GB PATA disk (windows install is on a 60GB partition on this disk, other 60 is unassigned)
2* 300GB PATA disks (raid array, mirroring)
2* 300GB SATA disks (not in raid).

All disks are 7200rpm and the two raid PATA disks are of identical model.

I love storage me

"(LEGACY or SATARAID depending on your driver choice and preparation) "

That's the part that confuses me. I followed your instructions to a T and I still get a blue screen asking me to chkdsk. I copied over all required files to the SATARAID folder. I don't quite know what I am doing wrong here.

Should I integrate both the LEGACY & SATARAID folders?

Thanks in advance

-redfive

I assume, that you have created a "healthy" and not bootable Raid array, that your Master Boot Record (MBR) is on your single 120 GB Pata disk and that this hdd is set as drive C:.
As you don't have a SataRaid, but a PataRaid system, you should do the following:
1. Look into your BIOS and set the "Hard Disk Boot Priority" to 1. your 120 GB PATA disk and 2. your RAID array.
2. Unplug the non-Raid Sata hdd before you begin with the installation.
3. Try to install XP MCE by using your nLited DVD.
If the installation fails, you should create a new nLited DVD with integrated PataRaid drivers (that means: integrate the LEGACY subfolder of the 6.85 driver package as TEXTMODE, but choose only the Raid Controller as device).

Please give me some details about your system (kind of motherboard and hdd's).
Never do a mixture of LEGACY and SATARAID subfolder!

I'll double check the boot status of the PATA raid, though I'm sure its not set. As for the other steps I'll work through them today or tomorrow. Thanks for the reply, I'll post one way or the other once I've tried these.

Motherboard: A8N-SLI Premium
Drivers used: Windows Vista Beta drivers
Methods:

1.) I moved the required files into the SATARAID folder (NVATABUS.INF, NVATA.CAT, NVIDE.NVU and NVCOI.DLL). I then integrated the SATARAID folder as TEXTMODE. Everything installed fine (as it usually does) but on first boot, I get a blue screen with the 7B error (and no I didn't press F6 during the setup!). The blue screen says to CHKDSK etc. I've gotten this blue screen everytime - even before I learned your method.

2.) I then tried it with moving the drivers into the SATARAID folder and integrating both the SATARAID folder *AND* the LEGACY folder. Same blue screen.

Should I integrate the LEGACY folder as PNP drivers? I am lost! THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP!

-Redfive

Take the LEGACY folder (without any file copying) and integrate it as TEXTMODE!

Attention: This advice and my guide (post 1) is only good for users with a SataRaid system. That means, that you have to do something else, if you don't have a proper created and activated nForce RAID array!

So don't even TOUCH the SATARAID folder?

[EDIT]
Okay I just integrated JUST the LEGACY folder and I still get the same blue screen on first boot. back to the drawing board...
[/EDIT]

Well, not true, I used the textmode method even though I don't have RAID, and everything is working flawlessly. Btw. those new "Vista" drivers got rid of the famous ID 51 bug (Detected error during paging operation) for me.

Does that mean I can't use your guide to get my PATA raid working?

UPDATE: Hmm It doesn't apear I can create a non bootable raid array. As soon as I reboot after creating the array it seams to set itself to bootable, and the raid drive doesnt show up in my bios to let me select the boot device order. Maybe Ill try removing the 120PATA and use the 300PATARAID as m windows disks and see if that helps.