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Integration of NVIDIA's nForce RAID and AHCI drivers


Fernando 1

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If you look at my first post, I've mentioned everything I[ve done, including using only the Legacy folder, using various driver revisions (6.85, 6.86, 6.70) as well as the Vista Beta and doing the old method of integrating everything into one OEMDIR folder... still getting the same error....
Another idea: From which source did you grab the drivers when you integrated them?

Maybe the source drive was not OK or at least the driver path was too long (too many characters).

Create a directory C:\SATARAID and put your favorite nForce SataRaid driver folders into that directory. Then run nLite again and try to integrate those drivers. After having created your nLited CD you can delete the driver folder.

Edited by Fernando 1
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Hey guys,

I'm new to the forum and need a hand w/ a fresh install of XP on a SATA drive.

The system recognizes the drive within windows, but when doing an installation to the new SATA I get an error that XP cannot find the drive.

I tried using Nlite to integrate the SATA drivers. I followed all the steps, but the XP installation is still giving me the same error. Any help w/ this issue would be greatly appreciated.

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I'm new to the forum and need a hand w/ a fresh install of XP on a SATA drive.

The system recognizes the drive within windows, but when doing an installation to the new SATA I get an error that XP cannot find the drive.

I tried using Nlite to integrate the SATA drivers. I followed all the steps, but the XP installation is still giving me the same error.

Please give us more informations:

Which mainboard and which nForce chipset S-ATA ports are you using?

Do you have a RAID array?

Which driver did you integrate?

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I had a striped raid array on an nVidia nForce4 chipset on my Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe. One of the two drives died and I sent out for a warranty replacement drives. Being cautious, I decided to do a web search for my hardware to identify any trouble spots dealing with installing XP on a new striped array. I was horrified when I read about all the endless reboots people were experiencing in this forum and elsewhere. After reading this forum, I was under the impression that I had to slipstream a new disk and do a host of other things I had no experience doing.

In the end, I decided to take my chances. I built the new stripe array in the bios and when installing windows I hit F6 and used the drivers from the 6.85 package (nForce4_x16_6.85_winxp2k_english.exe). It worked very smoothly. No endless restarts. No problems.

The only catch was the fact that I have another raid array on a raid card on my machine, and when I installed both sets of drivers my data drive was C: instead of my windows drive. That was annoying to me, so I installed fresh again, this time only loading the nForce drivers with F6 and waiting for windows to be installed before installing the drivers for the raid card. Now my windows drive is C: and all is right with the world.

So, for anyone out there with the same board and a raid array, fear not. F6 works just fine with the 6.85 drivers on a floppy, specifically the contents of the sataraid folder. I hope this information saves somebody some time.

(Oh yeah, in case it makes a difference, the drives are identical 74Gb 10,000 RPM SATA 2 Western Digital Raptors.)

Edited by dtocci
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In the end, I decided to take my chances. I built the new stripe array in the bios and when installing windows I hit F6 and used the drivers from the 6.85 package (nForce4_x16_6.85_winxp2k_english.exe). It worked very smoothly. No endless restarts. No problems.

So, for anyone out there with the same board and a raid array, fear not. F6 works just fine with the 6.85 drivers on a floppy, specifically the contents of the sataraid folder. I hope this information saves somebody some time.

Thanks for your report.

As you have realised, not all owners of a mainboard with an nForce RAID system will get endless reboots at the end of the installation, when they are using the F6/floppy method and load actual nForce SataRaid drivers.

Nevertheless the integration of the nForce SataRaid drivers into a bootable CD by using a tool like nLite is an easy, safe and comfortable method for all users with such hardware configuration.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hello,

I stumbled upon this wonderful thread when trying to google some help with my installation.

I have following configuration:

ASUS A8N-E mobo, nForce4 Ultra chipset, with latest (1.13) BIOS, forgot to write down nvraid version as I am at work now

AMD A64 x2 4600+ CPU

Some Asus 7600GT GFX

Apacer memory module 1GB (tested OK with memtest)

2x Seagate Barracuda 120GB 7200 RPM, sata 1 in RAID0 (stripe)

So far the story:

Last summer I bought it, put it together, and tried to install Windows XP Pro 32bit SP2 edition. Created new array, and proceeded with installation. Back then I had 1.12 BIOS and 3000+ single core Athlon 64. After few trial-error attempts I managed to successfully partition and install windows XP on striped disks. Howerer, I found that ONLY with drivers provided on installation CD ... cannot remember correct version now, will edit and fill in later. Other drivers I downloaded, unpacked and put on diskette did not work: If I was not getting BSOD prior to partition select, then I got error stating "Cannot read disk or CD, may be damaged ... insert vendor disk labeled so-and-so and press enter to continue" when it started to copy actual files from WXP cd.

Then I got dualcore, played with some HAL seatings resulting in need to reinstall windows XP :lol:

Yestersay I tried it ... well several times ... whole afternoon and evening. I created various floppies, made sure they are OK few times etc. Still got the same message stating "cannot read from disk or CD" when windows start to copy files on hard drive. Tried different version of XP (from mom's computer with integrated slovak MUI pack), tried 6.53 6.65 6.66 6.70 6.86 nvidia drivers, supplied either from nvidia download ssection or ASUS dowload site. Plus the original drivers from CD I used successfully first time, are not working too. Tried "hacks" with txtsetup.oem, putting nvatabus.inf to that diskette ... no success so far :(

Atop of that I would like to keep current raid intact, it's not funny to loose 180 GB of data again ... no big damage, but it would take ages to retrieve it from backups and various other computers.

Final questions:

Do you think going through process of nLiting the install disk with drivers, possibly several variations as I follow this thread, would lead to success? I am starting to be pesimistic when not even one attempt I did yesterday led to success ...

Is anybody here that successfully installed WXP this way on A8N-E board with raid0 already created?

Are there any special things I should pay attention to? (check versions - 6.86 is said is not working, + will need to get the nvraid bios revision)

Little note: modified CD would actually help me ... I did not figure out yet how to press F5 for HAL options (I want select ACPI multiprocessor) and F6 to install custom drivers simultaneosly ;)

Thank you very mcuh.

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Then I got dualcore, played with some HAL seatings resulting in need to reinstall windows XP :lol:

Yestersay I tried it ... well several times ... whole afternoon and evening. I created various floppies, made sure they are OK few times etc. Still got the same message stating "cannot read from disk or CD" when windows start to copy files on hard drive. Tried different version of XP (from mom's computer with integrated slovak MUI pack), tried 6.53 6.65 6.66 6.70 6.86 nvidia drivers, supplied either from nvidia download ssection or ASUS dowload site. Plus the original drivers from CD I used successfully first time, are not working too. Tried "hacks" with txtsetup.oem, putting nvatabus.inf to that diskette ... no success so far :(

Are you sure,

a ) that you have set the correct BIOS settings after the last BIOS update (after flashing a new BIOS, you always get the "default" settings) and

b ) that your floppy drive is working correctly?

Atop of that I would like to keep current raid intact, it's not funny to loose 180 GB of data again ... no big damage, but it would take ages to retrieve it from backups and various other computers.
There is no need to rebuild the RAID array, if the RAID utility says it's "healthy".
Final questions:

Do you think going through process of nLiting the install disk with drivers, possibly several variations as I follow this thread, would lead to success?

Yes - >300.00 users cannot be wrong!

It is not necessary to create more than 1 nLited CD. If your nVRAID BIOS version is 4.84 or higher, you should integrate the SATARAID+SATA_IDE subfolder of the 32bit nForce chipset driver package 6.86.

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Are you sure,

a ) that you have set the correct BIOS settings after the last BIOS update (after flashing a new BIOS, you always get the "default" settings) and

b ) that your floppy drive is working correctly?

a ) Yes, those windows were running several days without problem. Until I decided that when I bought dualcore, I want to actually see both of them and broke windows :)

b ) Yes, I can boot partition magic or slackware install floppies just fine

There is no need to rebuild the RAID array, if the RAID utility says it's "healthy".

Good, thank you.

Yes - >300.00 users cannot be wrong!

It is not necessary to create more than 1 nLited CD. If your nVRAID BIOS version is 4.84 or higher, you should integrate the SATARAID+SATA_IDE subfolder of the 32bit nForce chipset driver package 6.86.

Got 4.84 BIOS version.

300.000 users got problems with nvraid too? Ewww ... shouldn't nvidia start thinking about some re-edition of those drivers? :huh:

Allrighty, I will make the CD and then report how it works. Won't be probably immediately, if not during this week, then weekend hopefully when I find some more spare time.

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300.000 users got problems with nvraid too? Ewww ... shouldn't nvidia start thinking about some re-edition of those drivers? :huh:
Not all viewers of this thread had problems with NVIDIA's nForce RAID drivers, but at least nearly all of them succeeded with the creation of a bootable XP CD with integrated nForce SataRaid drivers.
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  • 2 weeks later...

It worked :thumbup

I just had to add the driver as text, and it asked me if I want to add also SATA_IDE. I confirmed, burned CD, booted and ... no BSOD, no "disk failure" errors, no reboots, that was beautiful clean install.

Thank you very very much, yay I am sooo happy!!!11one!!eleven1337!!!!! :w00t:

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First, thank you for keeping this up for so long. It is sincerely appreciated by all. You are reducing stress in the world!

I have followed your detailed instructions, with no luck. I had no problems creating the nLite CD, adding the proper drivers, and getting through the format and copy-file process of installing WindowsXP. However, upon restart when I'm expecting the HD to fire up and continue the Windows install process, I'm caught in the endless re-boot loop.

Prior to creating the nLite CD, I updated my BIOS, used a floppy (the f6 method) and installed WinXP that way, read about and changed various settings on my BIOS configuration relating to SATA/RAID, and verified that all cables, jumpers, etc are fine.

Here are my specs:

- Gigabyte mobo, GA-M61P-S3

- NVIDIA® GeForce 6100 / nForce 430

- 320GB SATA Seagate Barracuda 7200.10

- AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400+ Windsor 2.8GHz Socket AM2 Processor

- Windows XP Professional (32 bit)

I used drivers from: http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_nf4_wi...8.26_11.09.html The machine has only the cdrom, floppy, and one hard drive. No other peripheral cards or anything else is installed.

Any ideas you might have would be wonderful. Thanks!

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I have followed your detailed instructions, with no luck. I had no problems creating the nLite CD, adding the proper drivers, and getting through the format and copy-file process of installing WindowsXP. However, upon restart when I'm expecting the HD to fire up and continue the Windows install process, I'm caught in the endless re-boot loop.

Here are my specs:

- Gigabyte mobo, GA-M61P-S3

- NVIDIA® GeForce 6100 / nForce 430

- 320GB SATA Seagate Barracuda 7200.10

- AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400+ Windsor 2.8GHz Socket AM2 Processor

- Windows XP Professional (32 bit)

I used drivers from: http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_nf4_wi...8.26_11.09.html The machine has only the cdrom, floppy, and one hard drive. No other peripheral cards or anything else is installed.

Which nForce chipset driver IDE subfolder did you load?

Why did you create a RAID with just one single hard disk drive?

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Which nForce chipset driver IDE subfolder did you load?

Why did you create a RAID with just one single hard disk drive?

Answer 1: \nForceWinXP\11.09\MCP61\IDE\WinXP\sata_ide

\nForceWinXP\11.09\MCP61\IDE\WinXP\sata_raid

Answer 2: I don't want to create a RAID. I want my SATA drive to run Windows XP. It appears that SATA and RAID are very closely related when it comes to nForce chipsets, but my goal is to get WinXP to recognize and use my SATA drive.

Thanks for the help.

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Which nForce chipset driver IDE subfolder did you load?

Why did you create a RAID with just one single hard disk drive?

Answer 1: \nForceWinXP\11.09\MCP61\IDE\WinXP\sata_ide

\nForceWinXP\11.09\MCP61\IDE\WinXP\sata_raid

Answer 2: I don't want to create a RAID. I want my SATA drive to run Windows XP. It appears that SATA and RAID are very closely related when it comes to nForce chipsets, but my goal is to get WinXP to recognize and use my SATA drive.

Solution for you: Don't integrate the SATARAID, but only the SATA_IDE subfolder of your nForce chipset driver package.
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Solution for you: Don't integrate the SATARAID, but only the SATA_IDE subfolder of your nForce chipset driver package.

This did not work. I tried one disk with just the sata_ide folder added in, and I tried another disk having the sata_ide plus the ethernet and smbus drivers. The result is the same. After WinXP formats and copies files over, it restarts and gets hung in a re-boot loop.

I was also able to verify that the drivers provided on the Gigabyte web site are identical in version to the ones provided via the nVidia web site.

Any other ideas? Thanks!

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