Adaptec Zcr Raid

[Smitty519]

I've tried searching and extensive browsing/reading. I can't find this anywhere, so here's the problem:

System is:

SuperMicro X6DA8-G2 with 2 x 3.6 Ghz Xeons and 4 GB of PC3200 DDR2 RAM.

Adaptec 2010S Raid controller running the on-board 7902 SCSI with 3 x 10,000 RPM 147 GB Fujitsu drives arranged as a 2 drive RAID 1 and a single drive.

TekRam 1220 PCIe SATA/RAID controller running 8 x 7,200 RPM 250 GB Hitachi SATA drives (for Video).

Asus Radeon X800XT PCIe video

Creative Audigy 4 Pro sound card.

I've built an unattended install CD with XP-SP2 and drivers for the Intel 7225 chipset, the Adaptec, the TekRam, the on-board Intel pro-1000 ethernet and the Radeon as well as the ATI CP for the Radeon (installed using runonceex). The system installs successfully all the way through to the first post installation boot. During that boot the Tachometer (or whatever it's called) on the Windows XP splash screen runs very sloooo..wly and the system just kind of hangs there for awhle and eventually blue screens, if I wait long enough.

If I try to boot at his point in safe mode with command prompt, the hang seems to occur after loading Mup.sys. Is this when the runeonceex install of the ATI CP is taking place? If so, this worked before I added the Adaptec and tried booting on a RAID pair. BTW: all of this worked prior to the Adaptec and RAID system disc.

If I install from an SP2 CD and use F6 to add the driver for the 2010S the system installs fine and then I can install the drivers for everything else (starting with the Intel chipset drivers) and I get a working system.

I know this doesn't give anyone much to go on, but I'm hoping maybe someone else has run into something similar and solved it, or, at least, gained some insight that might help.

[Bâshrat the Sneaky]

I deleted the other topic .

Please post the changes you've made to the txtsetup.sif file!

[Smitty519]

Sorry, I've been really buried the last couple of days. I didn't see this till just now. I'm not where I can get that right now, but I'll post it tonight.

Do you want me to post the entire txtsetup.sif or just the changes I've made (all at the end)???

[Bâshrat the Sneaky]

Please ATTACH the txtsetup.sif, posting it completely won't work.

[Smitty519]

Bashrat,

First, thanks for any help.

Here's the additions I made to TXTSETUP.SIF. All were at the end of the file.

The forum wouldn't let me attach the whole file (too big) (~450 KB).

If you can give me a clue, I'd be grateful.

Thanks again,

Partial_TXTSETUP.SIF

[Bâshrat the Sneaky]

You did put adpu320.sys and dpti2o.sys in the I386 directory, right? If you want you can compress it, but it's not necessary.

Try to change this

adpu320.sys = 1,,,,,,3_,4,1
dpti2o.sys = 1,,,,,,3_,4,1

into

adpu320.sys = 1,,,,,,4_,4,1
dpti2o.sys = 1,,,,,,4_,4,1

[Smitty519]

I thought that txtmode.sif was only used during the text mode phase. Thiis works through text mode and gui mode install and the hang doesn't happen til the first boot after the install.

Also, is there a key somewhere of what these digit strings really mean?

I'm building a CD with your suggestion now and will be trying it shortly. Thanks again for your time and patience.

[Bâshrat the Sneaky]

Search microsoft.com for details. Or just use google. I once knew a good site with a clear explanation, but I don't remember its URI...

[Smitty519]

Okay -- That didn't make any difference. However, I think I understand what's going wrong:

It looks like Windows is installing the dpti2o.sys from the Drivers.cab instead of the one that I'm supplying via winnt.sif and the $OEM$\$1\drivers\003_2010s folder on the cd. This driver is also in the i386 folder as compressed as dpti2o.sy_. Is there a way to force Windows to use the newer driver that I'm supplyiing instead of the older non-functional one from the Drivers cab file? If I can't do that, is there a way to remove the dpti2o.sys from Driver.cab so that the installer has to use mine? The installer is definitely using the new driver for the text mode and gui mode parts of the install, cause without that, the installer can't even see the boot drive.

When I boot from a real SP2 CD and use F6 to supply the newer driver from a floppy, it works fine. However, on the Microsoft web-site I found a doc that says you can't replace a mass storage/SCSI/RAID driver in a cd based unattended install?? Is that true??

[Bâshrat the Sneaky]

Yes, there is Use my DriverPack MassStorage and it'll be done automatically.

Manually: open your dosnet.inf, go to the [ForceCopyDriverCabFiles] section and list there your file: dpti2o.sys (WITHOUT underscore!). Now it should work!

[Smitty519]

I followed your instructions (I opened dosnet.inf and added dpti2o.sys to the [ForceCopyDriverCabFiles] stanza) and the installer is still copying the wrong file (from the dirvers.cab). After the install completes and the first boot fails, I use a rescue disk (with F6 to load the driver) and investigate the windows\system32\drivers folder and the wrong dpti2o.sys is there.

In rescue mode, if I try to copy the drivers from the \drivers\003_2010s folder on the hard disk, the file cannot be accessed. I guess that's because it's outside the limited file structure that rescue mode allows access to.

I think I'm going to give this up and pronounce it unworkable. I guess I'll just have to install several systems the long hard way. There are several reasons that the driverpacks don't appear to be the right solution for this situation.

I'm sure there must be a way to override the driver from the cab file with the new one, but I sure can't find one that works.

[Bâshrat the Sneaky]

I found that info about [ForceCopyDriverCabFiles] in this article. Please read it (it's not too long), and tell me if I misunderstood it... Because it litterally says that it can force to copy a driverfile that's newer than the one in driver.cab...

KB article 814847

[Smitty519]

That's the way I read it also. However, it talks a lot about cat files which is implying signed drivers. Unfortunately, Adaptec didn't bother to get most of their current drivers certified. I wonder if that's part of the problem. Even with that set, it's still not copying the new driver. I do have "DriverSigningPolicy=Ignore" set in the winnt.sif. Do any other things need to be setup to tell the installer where the file is or does this just make him use the driver from the i386\dpti2o,sy_ file??

Do you know what magic F6 invokes? Installing from a regular sp2 cd and using F6 to load the drivers (same drivers I'm using) works perfectly.

Would it be worthwhile to attempt to remove the original driver from drivers.cab and make the required file changes to support that?? I'm not sure I know what all would have to be done to make that work??

[Bâshrat the Sneaky]

Well, I guess removing the older drivers might be the best option then... If you're lucky, nLite could do it for you!