[bn80934]

I've been doing alot of reading and learning the last few days.

I have a D865PERL motherboard, Win XP Home SP1a, Raid enabled but no RAID array created.

Trying to integrate Intel iaStor.sys drivers onto CD.

The F6 method will not work, I believe this is because after winxp formats the RAID drive, it will no longer read from the floppy disk to load the files to the HD.

I copied my winxp sp1a CD to c:\xpcd\xpcreate\cdroot


I have created the winnt.sif (in c:\xpcd\xpcreate\cdroot\i386)

[Data]
AutoPartition=1
MsDosInitiated="0"
UnattendedInstall="Yes"

[Unattended]
TargetPath=\WINDOWS
OemPreinstall=Yes
OemPnPDriversPath="Drivers\006\iaStor"
DriverSigningPolicy=Ignore
Repartition=yes
DisableDynamicUpdates=yes


and txtsetup.sif (in c:\xpcd\xpcreate\cdroot\i386)

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

[HardwareIdsDatabase]
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_24DF&CC_0104 = "iaStor"

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

[SCSI]
iaStor = "Intel® 82801ER SATA RAID Controller"


created directories for iaStor.sys:
c:\xpcd\xpcreate\cdroot\$OEM$\$1\Drivers\006\iaStor

I created a new drivers.cab file with the compressed and uncompressed versions of iaStor.sys....

I receive the message: 'the file iaStor.sys could not be found. Press any key to continue' at this point the PC reboots....


Any thoughts? I think I'm close

And where is the 'any' key?

Harold

[GreenMachine]

I have tested on a PERL MB, and got it working ... I'll look back on you in about 8 hours ...

[GreenMachine]

Sorry, Harold, I forgot about you there ...

Firstly, in my haste this morning, I did not notice your 4th sentence: "The F6 method will not work ... " That is never a good start, and if that does not work, I would contact the hardware vendor. How is the "normal" customer supposed to install Windows?

Were the F6 method to work, I would then try either adding the RAID drivers manualy to a non-modified XP CD source, as in an example HERE, or using XPCREATE, as discussed HERE. You certainly do not need to create a DRIVERS.CAB file, as you have never told XP to look for them there, nor should you be copying any files into the CDROOT directory.

What you have done, is told XP to look for iaStor.sys, compressed, in the I386 directory. It is not there, so you get the error.

[bn80934]

@GM
Thanks for your reply. What I posted was my latest most desperate attempt.

I tried various setups based on the post and your website.

I have it down to an error during textmode that says 'The file iastor.sys can not be found'.

I've placed the file in a bunch of directories hoping the winxp would find it.
drivers.cab
I386
$OEM$
$OEM$\$1
$OEM$\$1\drivers
$OEM$\$1\drivers\006
$OEM$\$1\drivers\006\iaStor

not sure where else it might be looking.

I'm going to d/l virtual pc and do some more testing without the 20min to burn a CD-RW (my good CDRW is in the machine that won't install, so I have a 2X in my old winxp machine. :-()

I have contacted Intel tech support...have a short review of my testing she passed it to tier 2 support. They will build a machine just like mine and test it.

I tried the recovery console during the F6 install and when I attempted to read the floppy drive it gave me an error that the driver could not be enumerated.

Does that give us any clues?

Thanks again.

Awesome program!

Harold

[GreenMachine]

@bn80934: I do believe XP is looking for iastor.sys as iastor.sy_, compressed, in I386. I also believe that if you cannot get the drivers in "attended", they will not worlk unattended. Don't bother trying to convince Intel that an XPCREATE CD is a valid XP distribution (it is ... ). Use Intel's help to get the driver installed "normally". make sure you can install Windows as per Intel's PERL documentation/recommendation.

Let me know what you find.

[bn80934]

Ok. A little progress last night.

It seems that the winxp installer is somewhat picky about capitalization.

I'm using all the features of XPCreate right now. just the build iso image and burn CD.

I modified my txtsetup.sif file in i386 as follows:
replace 'iaStor' with 'iastor'

then in I386 I renamed 'iastor.sy_' to 'IASTOR.SY_'

This eliminated my 'file iaStor.sys not found' during text-mode setup.

Now, I can get past the text-mode setup successfully.

The first reboot and gui install was successful.

The 2nd reboot failed. I couldn't see the error message because the computer immediatly rebooted.

There was no log file I could find.

I tried to start in 'safe mode with command prompt'. The system seemed to crash after the file 'mup.sys' was loaded.

Note: iastor.sys was loaded about 6 entries prior to this, so I don't think it was iastor.sys related.

Today (while at work), I'm reformatting the raid array and will try again tonight.

No word back from Intel yet on the F6 install issue. I tried the same trick with file names and capializations with the files from Intel and that did not fix the F6 install problem.

Harold

[GreenMachine]

Good to see you're getting somewhere. I still would feel better if the F6 method worked.

As for capitalization, it is true, you need the right combination of file name case and cd file structure. XPCREATE overcomes this by using all UPPERCASE file names for system files on the distribution. If XPCREATE integrated your SATA drivers, I would be surprised that the file was not already UPPERCASED. Can you confirm this? I'm not sure that the entries in TXTSETUP.SIF should be lowercase, as some of the other SATA drivers use mixed case there without a problem. But, you can never be too sure ...

Again, keep us posted, and certainly push Intel for a working F6 solution. If I understand correctly, you are without a means to install Windows on your new motherboard, unattended or otherwise. That just can't be ...

[bn80934]

@GM
I'm pretty sure that XPCreate did integrate the iastor.sys file correctly.
I recall one of my many builds that I did not have the 'file not found' error,
but I had something else wrong.

It was only have I didn't let xpcreate do all the work (trying to speed things up),
that I started getting the file not found error.


I'm cheating now...I bought another 40 gig WD IDE drive to install
winxp on and then use the SATA/RAID for everything else.

Still no word from Intel.....I hope the engineering is pounding his head
on the desk trying to figure it out!

Harold

[GreenMachine]

I would recommend seperate system and data disks, but I would also like to get to the bottom of this. I know how you feel about wanting to speed things up after the umphteenth install, but expierience has shown my that is usually where things go from bad to worse.

What will be interesting to see, is if the SATA drive is recognized by XP upon first boot, showing that those drivers and that controller can, in fact, work.. Let me know!

[bn80934]

Winxp could NOT see the SATA/RAID until I installed the Intel drivers from their install CD.

So now I have the system running.

boot driver: 40 gig WD, 8 meg cache
data: 2 - 80 gig Maxtor, 8 meg cache, SATA/RAID, striped

3 gig, P4, 800 Mhz FSB, with hyperthreading
1 gig DDR400 ram (2 sticks, channel A and .
Nvidia 5600, 128 meg ram

D865 Perl Intel motherboard.
-Harold

[GreenMachine]

I hate to insist, but XP really should have seen the SATA drive if you had the drivers in the $OEM$\Drivers ... and WINNT set accordingly. I just cannot believe that they market a board with integrated S-ATA, and require a P-ATA disk to install Windows. I don't know how you do it ... I'd have pestered someone to death before accepting that for an answer ...

Guess you have better karma! Anyway. All's well that ends well!

[bn80934]

Well I called Intel tech support on Tuesday and no word back yet...

so I hope some techie is pounding his brain as hard as I did.

I'll let u know their response about the F6 install.

xpcreate got me very close....

Keep up the good work!

Harold

[GreenMachine]

Still no word from Intel? It's a shame not to have the OS on a nice fast SATA disk ...

[bn80934]

Well I finally called Intel Tech support....after 1 week..

The guy starting asking 'did you try a new disk?' 'did you turn it on?"

I said wait I minute..Tier 2 support was supposed to try this out. Did they?

He said 'hold on a minute.....'

then he said 'umm.....it works..it must be a bad motherboard'.

I don't believe him, so I'm going to call back and talk to a supervisor. I think they never tried it.

Harold

[kataragon]

When you need to hit f6 to install a third party driver in XP from an external USB floppy disk..After copying the files to load the disk, it loses its ability to read from the USB drive. During setup you get an error that it can't find some of the iastor* files .. just hit escape to skip, for now.

When Windows reboots to continue installing, you get a BSOD because of the files you skipped.

Boot to the windows cd again, hit f6 again, but this time, instead of setting up windows, choose R for recovery console.

cd a:
dir

This will list all your iastor* files. You'll have to copy each one, one at a time.

copy iastor.sys c:\windows\system32\drivers\

etc.

After you've copied all of them, type
exit
to reboot Windows and continue. Setup should continue at this point.