Integration of NVIDIA's nForce RAID and AHCI drivers

[larciel]

i just wanted to mention that I really appreciate your replies!.

now on to the prob.

the first picture shows that all nvraid related files are in subfolder and not i386 directly (thus, causing the missing nvraid.sys error)

'raidtools' in second picture is neglectant, as i just did not erase the folder before i integrated.. (having raidtools folder shouldn't matter anyway to this problem.)

*do you have any idea why nvraid.sy_ is not copying to i386 folder? (yes it's setup as textmode)

[Fernando 1]

*do you have any idea why nvraid.sy_ is not copying to i386 folder? (yes it's setup as textmode)

Not really, unless you had downloaded a corrupted driver package. Maybe you should redownload the 6.53 package.

If you find the file NVATABUS.SY_ within the i386 folder, you probably did not choose both required drivers nLite propose to integrate as textmode drivers.

For the moment I propose the following tests:

1. If you have a floppy disk drive, try to install Windows XP by F6 method, by using the old Shuttle RAID driver disk.

2. If the install succeeds, try the same with the SataRaid drivers off the 6.53 package (copy the whole content of the IDE\WinXP folder exepting the RAIDTOOLS subfolder onto an empty floppy).

After these tests take the best driver for the integration by using nLite. Do nothing else, just integrate these **** nForce SataRaid drivers. Don't change anything within the nLited folders and files (as I have seen on your pics, you have created an $OEM$ folder and an OEM subfolder).

Good luck!

Fernando

[RickSteele]

Fernando 1

NVIDIA has just released a new set of nforce4X16 drivers dated Feb 7, 2006, version 6.85. Have not installed yet-just downloaded them now.

Thought you might like to know.

[thornsword]

Hi Fernando, I just wanted to say thanks for taking the time to create this guide and still tend it attentivly. Creating the RAID was easy enough and I made sure I had the 4.84 RAID Bios. The system reported it as healthy. Setting up RAID using a floppy and the F6 method would never work for me. I would get the symptom of the endless reboots at the end of a seemingly sucessful XP GUI install. I think I remember seeing that you are a DFI nF4 LANparty SLI-DR user. That's what I have as well and I tried following your guide for using nLite to integrate the Nvidia RAID drivers. I think I was doing that part right but I would always be confused as to what file, if any I needed to modify (edit by hand in a text editor)

Well, in frustration, I re-checked DFI's website for the motherboard and they had posted on 2006/01/27 a new RAID driver.

http://us.dfi.com.tw/Support/Download/driv..._FLAG=A&SITE=NA

I used nLite RC 1.06 to intergrate the driver DFI posted there and it worked without needing to do any further modification! I don't know how these files are different,

(because I tried the driver from Nvidia and the old ones from DFI and they would give me the endless reboots too. I can only guess that somehow these drivers have some portion of the code re-written, or differently called, or that infact the drivers are now properly WHQL certified. Just thought I would bring this to your attention.

my system:

DFI nF4 LANparty SLI-DR

2x200 Samsung Spinpoint SATA 3.0g in RAID0 (finally, yeah!)

IDE DVD burner

etc

nLite XP pro with slipstreamed SP2 integrated RAID drivers

Thanks again, without this forum I never would have gotten this far!

Edited February 2, 2006 by thornsword

[Fernando 1]

NVIDIA has just released a new set of nforce4X16 drivers dated Feb 7, 2006, version 6.85. Have not installed yet-just downloaded them now.

Thought you might like to know.

Hi Rick,

thank you for this information, but I already knew it (I started this thread: http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/1-vt64530....er=asc&&start=0)

There is no big difference betweeen the older 6.82 and the new 6.85 package concerning the version of the various drivers, but one thing is brandnew: The 6.85 package has a LEGACY folder, which contains all necessary files. So the integration of these drivers will be much easier than before. As a consequence I will adapt my guide regarding this point.

Hi Fernando, I just wanted to say thanks for taking the time to create this guide and still tend it attentivly. Creating the RAID was easy enough and I made sure I had the 4.84 RAID Bios. The system reported it as healthy. Setting up RAID using a floppy and the F6 method would never work for me. I would get the symptom of the endless reboots at the end of a seemingly sucessful XP GUI install. I think I remember seeing that you are a DFI nF4 LANparty SLI-DR user. That's what I have as well and I tried following your guide for using nLite to integrate the Nvidia RAID drivers. I think I was doing that part right but I would always be confused as to what file, if any I needed to modify (edit by hand in a text editor)

I used nLite RC 1.06 to intergrate the driver DFI posted there and it worked without needing to do any further modification! I don't know how these files are different,

(because I tried the driver from Nvidia and the old ones from DFI and they would give me the endless reboots too. I can only guess that somehow these drivers have some portion of the code re-written, or differently called, or that infact the drivers are now properly WHQL certified. Just thought I would bring this to your attention.

Hi Thornsword,

thank you for the flowers!

You are right - I have very similar hardware as you have (my DFI Lanparty NF4 is the best board I ever had).

What was it, what you have edited by hand? It's a while ago, that people needed to do some "handmade" editing. Since nLite 1.0 RC1everything works automaticly, if you follow my guide.

At least a tip: The Raid driver you have downloaded from DFI homepage is a very old version from 2004. You should update the SataRaid drivers by a newer version (off the 6.70 package).

CU

Fernando

Edited February 2, 2006 by Fernando 1

[RickSteele]

Fernando1

"has a LEGACY folder, which contains all necessary files (even the CAT ones"

No CAT files in the Legacy folder and they install unsigned; also if you nlite integrated just the sataraid folder-installing the PNP MS ATAPI drivers you will have to update the ATAPI to the NVIDIA sw drivers manually after reboot in Device Manager, even though during 6.85 setup you are-as with the 6.82-asked if you wish to install the sw ATAPI-MS ones stay though-I guess the system feels MS unsigned are better than third party unsigned.

Just a side note; I will be doing the nlite thing with these drivers this weekend and trying out the image in an install but, I don't know.....I have a bad feeling about these.......

[Fernando 1]

"has a LEGACY folder, which contains all necessary files (even the CAT ones"

No CAT files in the Legacy folder and they install unsigned;

You are right, that was my bad. I had it already corrected before you have written this.

Also if you nlite integrated just the sataraid folder-installing the PNP MS ATAPI drivers you will have to update the ATAPI to the NVIDIA sw drivers manually after reboot in Device Manager, even though during 6.85 setup you are-as with the 6.82-asked if you wish to install the sw ATAPI-MS ones stay though-I guess the system feels MS unsigned are better than third party unsigned.

Just a side note; I will be doing the nlite thing with these drivers this weekend and trying out the image in an install but, I don't know.....I have a bad feeling about these.......

Thank you for this statement. I am very curious about your test results.

As I know, that you like testing, I would like to stimulate you to test the nForce SataRaid driver integration by using another tool named Windows Unattended CD Creator. This tool is rather simple and cannot be compared with nLite according the options, but has fully integrated a special method to prevent the substitution of the correct nForce driver by the wrong MS driver without any manipulations on the IDE controller drivers.

It would be interesting to know your experience with this tool and its alternative method.

If you want to use the WUCD Creator: The link to my guide in english language is here.

CU

Fernando

Edited February 5, 2006 by Fernando 1

[Blub]

Hey there,

Just successfully integrated nVRaid in my winxp home ed. using your method (s. quote). I copied the additional file into the sataraid folder and just selected it for integration in nLite 1.0 RC6 Tx!

... or if you just want to use the best and safest method for the later integration, you should take the SATARAID subfolder of the 6.70 package, but in this case you have to do some additional preparations within the IDE\WinXP directory of the driver package:

1) Open the LEGACY subfolder and copy the file NVATABUS.INF into the SATARAID subfolder.

2) Open the SATA_IDE subfolder and copy the files NVATA.CAT, NVIDE.NVU and NVCOI.DLL into the SATARAID subfolder.

Now your SATARAID subfolder of the 6.70 package is well prepared for the later integration of the SataRaid drivers

[Fernando 1]

Hey there,

Just successfully integrated nVRaid in my winxp home ed. using your method (s. quote). I copied the additional file into the sataraid folder and just selected it for integration in nLite 1.0 RC6 Tx!

Thanks!

CU

Fernando

[thornsword]

From Fernando (as I don't know how to add a quote like you guys do)

-----------------

Hi Thornsword,

thank you for the flowers!

You are right - I have very similar hardware as you have (my DFI Lanparty NF4 is the best board I ever had).

What was it, what you have edited by hand? It's a while ago, that people needed to do some "handmade" editing. Since nLite 1.0 RC1everything works automaticly, if you follow my guide.

At least a tip: The Raid driver you have downloaded from DFI homepage is a very old version from 2004. You should update the SataRaid drivers by a newer version (off the 6.70 package).

CU

Fernando

-------------------

After meticiously re-reading the first post I think my issues came about when I tried to integrate the \NVIDIA\nForceWin2KXP\6.70\IDE\WinXP\sataraid folder without first moving the files below as listed in your first post:

1) Open the LEGACY subfolder and copy the file NVATABUS.INF into the SATARAID subfolder.

2) Open the SATA_IDE subfolder and copy the files NVATA.CAT, NVIDE.NVU and NVCOI.DLL into the SATARAID subfolder.

Now your SATARAID subfolder of the 6.70 package is well prepared for the later integration of the SataRaid drivers

I was sure your method was not working for me as I was still getting the random reboots even after integrating the drivers from sataraid folder. I wish I had noticed before that I was missing the step to move those files. My apologies for not being as careful a reader as I should have been, if I had caught that I probablly could have saved myself several hours of frustration as I went to download other revisions of the Nvidia drivers and try to integrate them!

You are right to say the drivers dfi posted on thier website for the LANparty nF4 SLI-DR are old drivers from 2004, but I think the Windows XP install worked for me with these drivers because all the files that I needed (the ones I would have moved as stated in your first post) were already in the same directory. Its curious that dfi would post a new RAID driver on 2006/01/27. but have those drivers be time stamped at 2004/12.

I will re-try the method you list in your first post as soon as I am home from work. I'll post here with my new results, although I'm pretty sure I will be sucessful now that I see where my apparant mistake was.

[Fernando 1]

From Fernando (as I don't know how to add a quote like you guys do)

On the right hand bottom of each post you find 2 buttons: a "Quote+" and a "Quote" one. Just click on the "Quote" button, then you have the quoted text like here. If you want to answer at once to more than one post, you have to hit the "Quote+" button of each post and then the Reply button at the site bottom.

I will re-try the method you list in your first post as soon as I am home from work. I'll post here with my new results, although I'm pretty sure I will be sucessful now that I see where my apparant mistake was.

That would be fine. Before you start, please verify, that you have a Raid BIOS v. 4.84 (official BIOS 623-3 has it included).

Good luck!

Fernando

[Reinvented]

Nope, didn't figure it out.

Okay, so I noticed on DFI's site that they have new RAID Driver versions available dated 1/23/06. How would I go about installing these without reformatting and integrating them for the future?

Edited February 5, 2006 by Reinvented

[Fernando 1]

Okay, so I noticed on DFI's site that they have new RAID Driver versions available dated 1/23/06. How would I go about installing these without reformatting and integrating them for the future?

New dated download links on the homepage of a mainboard producer does not mean, that the drivers are really new.

Can you give me the link to the drivers and the details of your system?

[Tweakin]

I'm back! Though I guess that's a bad thing I got help a few months ago on this thread and everything was going great. I did a few hardware upgrades recently though, which included switching out some HDD's and I am back to having problems with NF4 driver integration.

Here is the hardware I am using:

ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe

A64 3500+ Venice

2gb (2x 1gb) OCZ DDR 3200

2 eVGA 7800GT's

2x 74gb WD Raptors

One of the raptors is new, the other isa year old or so. Both have been working fine for me though.

I have the latest BIOS update for the motherboard, which adds the 4.84 nvraid. The drivers I am slip streaming are from the nForce 4 AMD 32bit set, verison 6.70.

So anyway. After creating a stripped array of the raptors, I load up the windows installer. Windows sees them as one big drive and everything seems normal. I create a 50gb partition, format, and load setup files. Then, on the first reboot, all I get is a blank black screen. The CDROM spins up, but it stops there. It never gets to the actual install and configure portion of the setup.

Any ideas what the problem could be? I think it may be hardware related because I am using an older slipstream that I had working with 2 other raptors. I looked through the BIOS, making sure all my boot priorities are correct and nothing else seems to be conflicting with previous setups.

I have also tried using a new slipstream that was made with the same 6.70 and nLite 1.0 rc6. Still getting the same blank screen though.

Thanks for any help!

[Fernando 1]

So anyway. After creating a stripped array of the raptors, I load up the windows installer. Windows sees them as one big drive and everything seems normal. I create a 50gb partition, format, and load setup files. Then, on the first reboot, all I get is a blank black screen. The CDROM spins up, but it stops there. It never gets to the actual install and configure portion of the setup.

Do you mean it stops after the install of the setup files and before the hardware installation begins?

Is the cursor on left hand top of the screen blinking?

Did you change anything else unless you have a new raptor?

Is your PSU strong enough?

Have you tested your RAM sticks (memory test)?

Do you have the correct voltage for your RAM?

My tip: Set BIOS timings at default (no overclocking), unplug all unnecessary hardware devices and try it once more. Maybe you should test it with a little enhancement of the RAM voltage (0,1 V).