Help needed - VT8237

[CyberCod]

I've gone and done it this time...

I gave advice to a buddy on what motherboard to buy and now I can't get XP to install due to missing SATA drivers.

The motherboard in question is ECS KT600-A... which apparently is problematic for some people.

The SATA controller appears to be VT8237, which I only surmise because that is what it says when the bios-embedded raid utility flashes on the screen at boot.

He got it from a pretty chintzy online seller, who sent the manual and drivers on a homemade CD. Meh... it works okay anyway I guess.

I had originally planned on doing a dual boot system for him with both XP Pro and Ubuntu Gutsy. I went to do the XP first since I didn't want to have to install GRUB twice, and if XP isn't there when you first install Ubuntu, you tend to have to update the menu.lst file for GRUB after every kernel update... anyway, I'm getting off track.

I hit the wall with the SATA driver problem and decided to go ahead and install Gutsy anyway. So I partitioned it all out, leaving room for XP at the front of the drive, I installed Ubuntu and then made the floppy disk from the drivers on the CD. Basically I just copied the files from the CD that were in a folder called "Driverdisk" to a floppy.

I went back to installing XP, hit F6 and proceeded to pick a driver that showed up and it gave me an error message which I can't remember exactly right now, but it was something about a bad line in a text file somewhere. So I went back to Ubuntu and did some reading and found out about slipstreaming drivers in and whatnot and decided to go that route when I got back to my house.

I have done a slipstream disk once before, when I got tired of having to deal with the pre-SP1 partition size limits. So it wasn't really that scary of an idea.

But now I have spent the whole day reading about all of this, and I'm more confused than I was when I started out.

There is a lot of information in this forum, but most times the posters seem to make assumptions about future readers actually having a clue. Which I clearly don't.

So, if anyone can direct me to a clear-cut guide to slipstreaming drivers for the VT8237, I'd be most appreciative.

If there isn't a specific guide for that chipset, then perhaps I could get answers to a few questions I have?

1.) What is the significance of textmode drivers versus PnP drivers?

2.) Is one better than the other?

3.) Does Service Pack 2 have these sata drivers? Would I have an easier time just slipstreaming that in?

4.) What is it with OEMpreinstall and F6? I've heard it mentioned more than a few times as being problematic, but I can't seem to get a clear idea of what is going on with that.

5.) I found reference to Bâshrat's MassStorageDrivers Pack on this page but when I click on the link shown there I get a page with an error message stating I don't have permission to use that feature. Is this Driver Pack worth my time? If so, is there an alternate download location?

6.) What is OOBE?

I apologize for the length of this post. I realize it is pretty verbose, its just that my buddy lives a little distance away. I would like to go there with a disk in hand that I KNOW will work. I can't bring his machine to my house, he needs it. And taking my windows machine to his house would be more trouble than you can imagine and my laptop uses Linux.

Thanks for reading this, and thanks in advance for your help.

Edited March 8, 2008 by CyberCod

[CyberCod]

Right now I've been following the steps on this page

First i copied my drivers to the directory $OEM$\$1\Drivers\VT8237

3 files:

viamraid.cat

VIAMRAID.INF

viamraid.sys

added the following lines to TXTSETUP.SIF like this:

[SourceDisksFiles]
viamraid.sys = 1,,,,,,4_,4,1,,,1,4

[HardwareIdsDatabase]
PCI\VEN_1106&DEV_3249 = "viamraid"
PCI\VEN_1106&DEV_3149 = "viamraid"
PCI\VEN_1106&DEV_3164 = "viamraid"

[SCSI.load]
viamraid = viamraid.sys,4

[SCSI]
viamraid = "VIA SATA RAID Controller"

added the following lines to WINNT.SIF:

[Unattended]
OEMPreinstall=Yes
OemPnPDriversPath=”Drivers\VT8237”

I used the 'makecab' command to create a VIAMRAID.SY_ file and placed it in the I386 directory

Doublechecked to see that the WINNT.SIF file had the following parameters included:

UnattendedInstall=Yes
MSDosInitiated=No

And I used the 'filecase' command to make sure that all the files in the I386 directory are UPPER CASE.

(this was causing me to get a USBEHCI.SYS error earlier)

I am about to create an ISO to test in virtual machine... I know this won't tell me if the raid drivers are working, but it will tell me if I screwed anything else up.

Does anyone see anything else I need to do? Any steps I have missed?

[CyberCod]

ISO Image worked fine.... will be testing out tomorrow hopefully (If the roads are clear, there's a blizzard outside right now) and will report back

You folks should be expecting more people searching for these kinds of things now that all the new PC's are being sold with Vista.

Everyone I've talked to hates Vista and wants to come back to XP. And the XP install disc just doesn't cut it with some of today's hardware.

Yeah, prepare to be busy.

[CyberCod]

Hey all, it worked like a charm. So thats all the steps needed for this particular SATA driver.

Guess I'm just talking to myself for now, but I try to be thorough for people coming to read later on.

All of the posts i got this info from was circa 2005, so here 3 years later it still valid.

I may re-write this in a HowTo mode so that it can be searched easier.