Successful NVRAID unattended slipstream

[cfeedback]

I don't know if I'm the only one who had a hell of a time getting NVRAID to work unattended (ie non-F6 install) but I spent a good 2 days (sleep? what's that?) searching for any sort info on how to get it to up and running. I sure didn't see any glowing success stories out there. I now have it set up on both an MSI K7N2 Delta2 Platinum & an MSI K8N2 Neo Platinum. With a 3GB bootable DVD that has it all, this AMD64 PC is finally ready to be delivered to my uncle who I built it for. I'll post the relevant info below and let someone else make a nice step by step how-to. This is basically GreenMachine's guide with the right hardware IDs and what not for NVRAID.

Hardware was the Neo Plat mentioned above, AMD64 3200+, and 2x Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 200GB serial ATA HDs on SATA channel 3 and 4. RAID 1 bootable. Slipstreamed Windows XP Pro w/SP2, all my device drivers, and a ton of applications. RAID/SATA drivers are straight out of the nForce 4.24 install.

Only thing you need in winnt.sif is...

OemPnPDriversPath=Drivers\RAID;Drivers\IDE

While I'm not sure if syntax matters, MS lists it without any "" and without a ; after the last directory. Also I found no difference in trying to order my drivers ie 001_RAID, 002_IDE - but I would suggest you keep your directory names to 8 characters or less. Again, I don't know if that's crucial but I did read that somewhere and this is what worked for me. You can of course have as many other directories as you need listed there for your other drivers, up to I believe 4096 characters.

Next, in txtsetup.sif

[SourceDisksFiles]
nvatabus.sys          = 1,,,,,,4_,4,1,,,1,4
nvraid.sys            = 1,,,,,,4_,4,1,,,1,4

[HardwareIdsDatabase]
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_008E = "nvatabus"
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0085 = "nvatabus"
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00D5 = "nvatabus"
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00EE = "nvatabus"
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00E3 = "nvatabus"
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00E5 = "nvatabus"
*_NVRAIDBUS           = "nvraid"
GenNvRaidDisk         = "nvraid"

[SCSI.load] 
nvatabus              = nvatabus.sys,4
nvraid                = nvraid.sys,4

[SCSI] 
nvatabus              = "NVIDIA NForce Storage Controller"
nvraid                = "NVIDIA RAID CLASS DRIVER"

You may or may not have to change 4_ (in the SourceDisksFiles) to _x if you don't compress your .sys files in a step coming up. It doesn't (appear) to matter if you list these under an existing heading in txtsetup or all at the end - I did the latter. Like a few others I've seen I'm not real clear on the format of the #,,, crap but the one I know has to be right in this particular setup is the 4 for the System32 directory.

As I said above, this is basically what GreenMachine tells you to do in his guide. The main problem I had were getting the 2 nvraid HardwareIDs right. In hindsight I feel like an id*** for it taking this long, but do a google on GenNvRaidDisk and you don't see too many people talking about it. I spent a lot of time on these forums, MSI's, nforceHQs, and several others and saw lots of people talking about SATA/RAID but not too many about NVRAID specifically. If you need this info (ie your drivers are similiar but not identical, it's in your .inf file(s). Example...

nvraid.inf

[NVIDIA]
%NVRAID_DESC%=nvraid,GenNvRaidDisk
%NVRAID_BUS_DESC%=nvraid,*_NVRAIDBUS

nvatabus.inf

[NVIDIA]
%MCP2Desc%=Crush11_Inst,PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0065
%CK8Desc%=Crush11_Inst,PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00D5&REV_A2
%CK8DescSB%=Crush11_Inst,PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00D5&REV_F2
%CK8Desc%=Crush11_Inst,PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00D5&REV_A4
%CK8DescSB%=Crush11_Inst,PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00D5&REV_F4
%CK8Desc%=Crush11_Inst,PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00D5&REV_A5
%CK8DescSB%=Crush11_Inst,PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00D5&REV_F5
%CK8Desc%=Crush11_Inst,PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00D5&REV_A6
%CK8DescSB%=Crush11_Inst,PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00D5&REV_F6
%MCP2SS%=Crush11_Inst,PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_008E&REV_A2
%MCP2SS%=Crush11_Inst,PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_008E&REV_A3
%MCP2SP%=Crush11_Inst,PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0085
%CK8SSP%=Crush11_Inst,PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00E5
%CK8SSS%=Crush11_Inst,PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00EE
%CK8SSS%=Crush11_Inst,PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00E3

As you'll notice I didn't need to list them all, and in fact had a couple for the MCP2 that I'm pretty sure I didn't need. I don't think it hurts to list them all for a universal nforce install. If it's not clear, you start after the comma and list everything to the right = "driver"

Ok, next you need to take your nvraid.sys and nvatabus.sys files, use makecab to compress them, and stick them in your \XPCD\I386\ directory. You do NOT need an I386\$OEM$\ directory for this to work - just your regular $OEM$ one with the paths defined in winnt.sif. The 2 .sys files you compressed earlier should also be here in their original form. I split the files up from nForceWin2KXP\4.24\IDE\WinXP\ up into RAID and IDE directories based on someone else's setup I saw but I'm not sure that's necessary. If you do go that route, in my IDE directory I had...

C:\XPCD\$OEM$\$1\Drivers\IDE
idecoi.dll
nvata.cat
nvatabus.inf
nvatabus.sys
nvcoi.dll

Everything else went in Drivers\RAID. You can safely delete the disk1 and txtsetup.oem files. With that you should be ready to make your ISO! The only thing that didn't work the same as a floppy install was I had to manually create a start menu shortcut for the nvraidman.exe program.

For those of you trying to fiddle around with TEXTMODE, I have a hunch it would work that way too with the .sys (sy_ for \i386\) and .dll files in the right places - I think you'd need some of them in at least 2 or 3 locations from my experience with earlier attempts. When you install (well in my case) the drivers from a floppy via F6, when windows is completely installed you're left with a Windows\Oemdir\ directory with the files from the floppy (the .infs will be renamed by the windows installer). Since the installer can't handle .DLLs in textmode, it appears to me it loads just the .sys files, copies the rest to the Oemdir, and installs those in the GUI part of the process. You won't, however, be able to achieve the same result as easily (believe me I tried!). I'm guessing you'll need your \I386\$OEM$\ dir, and in there you'll need ones for textmode, \$$\System32\driver\, etc at the least. After countless hours reading obscure microsoft technotes and whatnot I have the impression that it will work if you really want it to., but I'm not about to mess around with this anymore on a PC that's not even mine. When in doubt, duplicate the driver files in different directories and use a process of elimination. Nearly every time there was a problem the installer would tell me what file caused the error, and if it was an .inf file what line even. Best of luck to you if that's the way you want to go...

Phew, this is a little lengthier than I planned and probably more detail than the average member of this forum needs. I'm sure this can be integrated into the DriverPack in about 30 seconds. I believe now the only reason it didn't work initially on my setup was due to the missing GenNvRaidDisk entry - although I also found no need to edit the dosnet.inf file. In any case I hope this helps at least a few others!

[rcordorica]

thanx for the info and the hard work. I have been working on the textmode method to achieve the same thing, although my method requires more wasted space and is still a bit buggy. (or is it Nvidia that is buggy?)

@Bâshrat - Can you please fix the NVRAID within your driverpack with this.. Thanx.

[Bâshrat the Sneaky]

Thank you very much for the detailed information, cfeedback!

I think someone else mentioned it in the DP MassStorage or the "Finally I've ..." topic. But yours confirms that once again, along with detailed info! I was planning to add this to the new version of DP MassStorage, but I wasn't 100% sure if it'd work. Now I AM sure

@rcordorica: of course!

(PS: working on the update today!)

[DisabledTrucker]

As far as having two different directories for Raid and IDE, it may have been me that had it shown as that was how I was doing it before I went with the txtmode setup of the drivers and calling them from within WinNT.sif exclusively, (I have yet to test this method, but will soon.) In my setup prior I was using:

$OEM$\Drivers\

...

IDE\

...

RAID\

The IDE held all my files for the motherboards IDE drivers and the RAID held all my RAID drivers for the SATA-RAID controller on my hdd, which are different. In that I have an NVidia mobo which uses NVidia drivers for the IDE and a Promise controller to handle my SATA-RAID. I have since compiled them both into one folder and thus don't need to have both an IDE and a RAID section even in my external, (outside i386 folder,) $OEM$ folder. I have also since put the rest of my motherboard drivers in a PNPdrvrs folder within my i386\$OEM$ folder which contains the rest of my drivers for my motherboard. Since all my motherboards are Nvidia based, this solution should be best for my needs. Now to figure out how to get the ATI and Creative drivers to install the same way with their control panels, etc installed as well. Which would be especially nice if I can also gain use of the AIW's files as well that way. Though I only use the ATI/Creative drivers on one of my systems, it would still be nice if I can do away with the external $OEM$\Drivers folder altogether. Though I will still need the external $OEM$ folder to include other software it would tremendously save space on my UXPCD if all my drivers would work in the internal $OEM$ folder so it's automatically removed once everythings installed without having to make a seperate clean up script to do it.

FWIW, putting the drivers in the internal $OEM$ folder not only allows for instant deletion when installing from CD, but it also isn't supposed to require any inclusion of putting information into any other file but the WinNT.sif file as it's all automatically found in the \txtsetup and \pnpdrvrs path where Windows XP automatically looks for those drivers before looking elsewhere for them when they aren't found in the .cab files. Less work on my part if this works, and less strain on my single brain cell.

After further testing none of these methods I talked about in this worked at all for me, sorry for the confusion...

Edited October 8, 2004 by DisabledTrucker

[overclock]

Thanks for that excellent explanation. All of the sudden my floppy won't read the driver diskette. Don't know what happened. Hopefully this will work.

I searched and searched but couldn't find anything either.

[buletov]

Bâshrat the Sneaky, is this topic means that your previous builds don't support nvraid? cause you have the drivers for both nvata and nvraid on those...

[BigA]

First off, thanks for all the hard work. I have an MSI Neo2 Platinum, and I was getting a txtsetup.oem error when trying to load the drivers off the floppy during the xp install, so I tried to give your raid slipstream a try. I was able totally install xp, but when it restarted after the install, I got to the xp splash screen and it rebooted; this happens over and over.

I am not sure if this is happening cause of the raid slipstream or sometihing totally different cause this board has been having so many other problems. Well anyway, here is how I setup the slipstream. The drivers I used are here at the bottom of the page. Was wondering if I missed something?

First I added this to txtsetup.sif like you said.

[sourceDisksFiles]nvatabus.sys          = 1,,,,,,4_,4,1,,,1,4

nvraid.sys            = 1,,,,,,4_,4,1,,,1,4

[HardwareIdsDatabase]

PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_008E = "nvatabus"

PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0085 = "nvatabus"

PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00D5 = "nvatabus"

PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00EE = "nvatabus"

PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00E3 = "nvatabus"

PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00E5 = "nvatabus"

*_NVRAIDBUS        = "nvraid"

GenNvRaidDisk      = "nvraid"

[sCSI.load]

nvatabus              = nvatabus.sys,4

nvraid                = nvraid.sys,4

[sCSI]

nvatabus              = "NVIDIA NForce Storage Controller"

nvraid                = "NVIDIA RAID CLASS DRIVER"

Next I added this to my winnt.sif file.

OemPnPDriversPath=Drivers\001_RAID;Drivers\002_IDE

Next I placed these files to C:\XPCD\$OEM$\$1\Drivers\002_IDE

idecoi.dll

nvata.cat

nvatabus.inf

nvatabus.sys

nvcoi.dll

From here I put all the other files into C:\XPCD\$OEM$\$1\Drivers\001_Raid

Next I used the command prompt for MAKECAB. Here is what I put.

MAKECAB C:\XPCD\$OEM$\$1\Drivers\001_Raid\nvraid.sys C:\XPCD\I386\nvaid.sy_

MAKECAB MAKECAB C:\XPCD\$OEM$\$1\Drivers\002_Ide\nvatabus.sys C:\XPCD\I386\nvatabus.sy_

From here I just burned the CD. Like I said, everything worked fine until got to the xp splash screen and it rebooted. I was a little confused in this part of your explanation (here is where I thinkd I missed a step).

As I said above, this is basically what GreenMachine tells you to do in his guide. The main problem I had were getting the 2 nvraid HardwareIDs right. In hindsight I feel like an id*** for it taking this long, but do a google on GenNvRaidDisk and you don't see too many people talking about it. I spent a lot of time on these forums, MSI's, nforceHQs, and several others and saw lots of people talking about SATA/RAID but not too many about NVRAID specifically. If you need this info (ie your drivers are similiar but not identical, it's in your .inf file(s). Example...

CODE

nvraid.inf

[NVIDIA]

%NVRAID_DESC%=nvraid,GenNvRaidDisk

%NVRAID_BUS_DESC%=nvraid,*_NVRAIDBUS

nvatabus.inf

[NVIDIA]

%MCP2Desc%=Crush11_Inst,PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0065

%CK8Desc%=Crush11_Inst,PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00D5&REV_A2

%CK8DescSB%=Crush11_Inst,PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00D5&REV_F2

%CK8Desc%=Crush11_Inst,PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00D5&REV_A4

%CK8DescSB%=Crush11_Inst,PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00D5&REV_F4

%CK8Desc%=Crush11_Inst,PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00D5&REV_A5

%CK8DescSB%=Crush11_Inst,PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00D5&REV_F5

%CK8Desc%=Crush11_Inst,PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00D5&REV_A6

%CK8DescSB%=Crush11_Inst,PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00D5&REV_F6

%MCP2SS%=Crush11_Inst,PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_008E&REV_A2

%MCP2SS%=Crush11_Inst,PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_008E&REV_A3

%MCP2SP%=Crush11_Inst,PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0085

%CK8SSP%=Crush11_Inst,PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00E5

%CK8SSS%=Crush11_Inst,PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00EE

%CK8SSS%=Crush11_Inst,PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00E3

As you'll notice I didn't need to list them all, and in fact had a couple for the MCP2 that I'm pretty sure I didn't need. I don't think it hurts to list them all for a universal nforce install. If it's not clear, you start after the comma and list everything to the right = "driver"

This board has been a nightmare to me as it is having other problems like recognizing one of my cd burners and lags at the post screen. Probably going RMA it but I wanna check to see if I did this right.

Thanks in advance

BigA

[Bâshrat the Sneaky]

@buletov: No, I DO have them inthere! I think from the first version of my hand!

@BigA: good job, but could you PLEASE try my driverpack? I'm using EXACTLY the same entries!

[BigA]

Bâshrat the Sneaky

So your saying my settings should be okay and this should have worked for me? Maybe its the drivers causeing the problems. I am going to extract the drivers from the Nvidia nForce3 5.03 package at the MSI site. Just realized the drivers I were kind of dated. Think I am going to change the raid from 32k to 64k too. If this doesn't work its RMA time. Man I miss my NF7-S 2.0 anf my 2500+ at 2.3ghz!!

BigA

[Bâshrat the Sneaky]

Bâshrat the Sneaky

So your saying my settings should be okay and this should have worked for me?  Maybe its the drivers causeing the problems.  I am going to extract the drivers from the Nvidia nForce3 5.03 package at the MSI site.  Just realized the drivers I were kind of dated.  Think I am going to change the raid from 32k to 64k too.  If this doesn't work its RMA time.  Man I miss my NF7-S 2.0 anf my 2500+ at 2.3ghz!!

BigA

ow I misunderstood you.. thought it worked for you...

Well anyway, please try my driverpack!

[cfeedback]

So your saying my settings should be okay and this should have worked for me?  Maybe its the drivers causeing the problems.  I am going to extract the drivers from the Nvidia nForce3 5.03 package at the MSI site.  Just realized the drivers I were kind of dated.  Think I am going to change the raid from 32k to 64k too. If this doesn't work its RMA time.  Man I miss my NF7-S 2.0 anf my 2500+ at 2.3ghz!!

BigA

I would have to agree that you should give Bashrat's pack a try as it looks like it's working fairly well now and he's done the hard work for you. I posted this because at the time there were still a few issues with it and NVRAID and I needed something to work RIGHT away. Plus, I just needed to go over the process I went through after a grueling two days of frustration and countless windows installs (thank god for dvd-rw's).

Might I also suggest you ignore anything and everything MSI gives you driver/application wise (well..excluding your BIOS updates of course) and get the RAID drivers from the nvidia package: http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_udp_winxp_5.10

[CoMpuLs1^e]

i tried your driver pack for the nvidia sata driver, and i received an error when i ran the batch file that downloads the program to unpack the .7z file

Extracting Driverpack MassStorage...

'7za' is not recognized as an internal or external command,

operable program or batch file.

Extraction complete! See extraction.log for more info (before ending this batch

or the file will be deleted).

Press any key to continue . . .

any ideas what I did wrong?

Thankx

[rgreen83]

I dont think you did anything wrong, it says extraction completed.

I dont consider something an "error" unless it results in fire of some sort, that, or a portal opening to hell.

[Bâshrat the Sneaky]

i tried your driver pack for the nvidia sata driver, and i received an error when i ran the batch file that downloads the program to unpack the .7z file

Extracting Driverpack MassStorage...

'7za' is not recognized as an internal or external command,

operable program or batch file.

Extraction complete! See extraction.log for more info (before ending this batch

or the file will be deleted).

Press any key to continue . . .

any ideas what I did wrong?

Thankx

7za.exe isn't downloaded... Download it manually!

Bâshrat the Sneaky

[CoMpuLs1^e]

cfeedback- Thank you so much!!! I have tried every other method and failed every time until I did what you posted.