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Integration of NVIDIA's nForce RAID and AHCI drivers


Fernando 1

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Further questions:

Are the 4 hard disk drives of your RAID completely detected within the BIOS?

If I remember right, after I enabled NV-RAID in the BIOS

the actual BIOS didn't show my 4 drivers anymore. I can only check my drives by entering the NV-RAID SETUP (F10 on startup)

Have you set your RAID array as bootable within the RAID utility and the RAID as first bootable hard disk within the BIOS?

The RAID array I made is set boot able within the RAID utility.

Do you have partitioned and NTFS formatted the RAID array?

I used Partition Magic to create a 300GB NTFS partition

Do you have slipstreamed SP2 into the OS CD?

I haven't slipstreamed SP2 into the OS yet!

What do you mean by "completely detected"?

The fact that the drives aren't shown within the BIOS can be the cause of my problem.

Only my SATA DVD-Writer is shown. and I have unplugged the cables of my other SATA devices.

I can't figure out which setting makes the drivers visible.

Edited by FLiPPie
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Do you have partitioned and NTFS formatted the RAID array?

I used Partition Magic to create a 300GB NTFS partition

What is the reason for taking Partition Magic and what is the reason for such a big partition size?

My recommendation: Take a tool like Acronis Disk DirectorSuite for partitioning and formatting the RAID and choose a partition size of 2x150 GB or 3x100 GB.

What do you mean by "completely detected"?

The fact that the drives aren't shown within the BIOS can be the cause of my problem.

Before you began with the creation of the RAID, your BIOS should have detected each of the 4 P-ATA hdd's.
Only my SATA DVD-Writer is shown.
A P-ATA-RAID array and a S-ATA connected optical drive is not a good combination at all. f you don't have any natively IDE connected CD/DVD-ROM drive, you probably will not succeed with the installation of any Windows OS onto your RAID array. Look into the pre-condition list of my guide. You have to start the OS installation off an IDE connected optical drive.
and I have unplugged the cables of my other SATA devices
Which other S-ATA devices than the DVD burner do you have? Edited by Fernando 1
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Do you have partitioned and NTFS formatted the RAID array?

I used Partition Magic to create a 300GB NTFS partition

What is the reason for taking Partition Magic and what is the reason for such a big partition size?

My recommendation: Take a tool like Acronis Disk DirectorSuite for partitioning and formatting the RAID and choose a partition size of 2x150 GB or 3x100 GB.

Normally I would make a 50GB partition for my operating system and the rest I will use for data storage. but since I am testing things I thought it was easier to have one big partition.

What do you mean by "completely detected"?

The fact that the drives aren't shown within the BIOS can be the cause of my problem.

Before you began with the creation of the RAID, your BIOS should have detected each of the 4 P-ATA hdd's.

All the four drives were detected prior to the RAID setup.

Only my SATA DVD-Writer is shown.
A P-ATA-RAID array and a S-ATA connected optical drive is not a good combination at all. f you don't have any natively IDE connected CD/DVD-ROM drive, you probably will not succeed with the installation of any Windows OS onto your RAID array. Look into the pre-condition list of my guide. You have to start the OS installation off an IDE connected optical drive.

This is kinda problem! the Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard contains only 2 PATA ports and I have connected 4 PATA drives.

the means a RAID 0 + 1 array is not possible. the only possible option left is RAID 0 or 1 with 3 PATA hard drives and 1 PATA DVD-writer.

and I have unplugged the cables of my other SATA devices
Which other S-ATA devices than the DVD burner do you have?

The other SATA devices are 2x 500GB hard drives.

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This is kinda problem! the Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard contains only 2 PATA ports and I have connected 4 PATA drives.

the means a RAID 0 + 1 array is not possible. the only possible option left is RAID 0 or 1 with 3 PATA hard drives and 1 PATA DVD-writer.

The other SATA devices are 2x 500GB hard drives.

It is not easy to give you any advice.

If I were you, I would break the P-ATA RAID and create a S-ATA RAID0 and use the P-ATA hdd's for backups etc.

Nevertheless you may get some troubles with any OS installation onto a RAID array as long as you are booting off the S-ATA connected optical drive. You will need an IDE connected CD/DVD-ROM during the OS installation (maybe borrowed from a friend).

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This is kinda problem! the Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard contains only 2 PATA ports and I have connected 4 PATA drives.

the means a RAID 0 + 1 array is not possible. the only possible option left is RAID 0 or 1 with 3 PATA hard drives and 1 PATA DVD-writer.

The other SATA devices are 2x 500GB hard drives.

It is not easy to give you any advice.

If I were you, I would break the P-ATA RAID and create a S-ATA RAID0 and use the P-ATA hdd's for backups etc.

Nevertheless you may get some troubles with any OS installation onto a RAID array as long as you are booting off the S-ATA connected optical drive. You will need an IDE connected CD/DVD-ROM during the OS installation (maybe borrowed from a friend).

Before I decided to use 4x 160GB PATA drives I transfered all data to the (new) 2x 500GB SATA drives.

Since I have a lot of spare parts I installed a PATA DVD-writer but also in this setup the drives are separately shown.

Anyway I have decided not to use any RAID setup.

I will install windows 2003 on a 50GB partition.

Within a few months I am thinking about buying a new computer and use the 2x 500GB SATA drives. (after I transfered all data)

Hopefully my future motherboard will be able to run 4x 500GB RAID 0+1 (or a RAID 5 setup)

Thanks for your help!

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Anyway I have decided not to use any RAID setup.

I will install windows 2003 on a 50GB partition.

Within a few months I am thinking about buying a new computer and use the 2x 500GB SATA drives. (after I transfered all data)

Hopefully my future motherboard will be able to run 4x 500GB RAID 0+1 (or a RAID 5 setup)

That's a good decision.
Thanks for your help!
You are welcome!
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I was having this same problem... It would go through the whole installation process.... then stop, dead at the missing idecoi.dll..

I was ready to pull the board back out and send it back.

A friend of mine, who has forgotten more about these beasts, than I will ever know, asked if he could take a look at it...

This is what he did, and it fixed my issue.

On my F6 floppy (Nvidia SATA RAID DRIVER Disc) he changed the attributes of the idecoi.dll to "read and write", then changed it to: Idecoi.dll

All he did was change the lower case "i" to an upper case "I"

It worked like a charm...

I hope this helps somebody/anybody..

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I was having this same problem... It would go through the whole installation process.... then stop, dead at the missing idecoi.dll..

I was ready to pull the board back out and send it back.

A friend of mine, who has forgotten more about these beasts, than I will ever know, asked if he could take a look at it...

This is what he did, and it fixed my issue.

On my F6 floppy (Nvidia SATA RAID DRIVER Disc) he changed the attributes of the idecoi.dll to "read and write", then changed it to: Idecoi.dll

All he did was change the lower case "i" to an upper case "I"

It worked like a charm...

I hope this helps somebody/anybody..

I have never heard about this procedural method and do not believe, that Windows Setup makes any difference between a lower and upper case of a character of any integrated driver package file.

It seems more probable for me, that the used F6/floppy driver package was corrupt or poorly modded (the entries of the TXTSETUP.OEM did not correspond with the associated driver files).

Edited by Fernando 1
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I am a neophyte to this but I thought I understood what was needed to build a slipstream disc. I have an HP a6230n computer with AMD Athlon 64 x2, NVIDIA Ge Force 6150 Se Graphics card, NForce serial ATA controller and network controller, ATAPI DVD A DH16A3L SCSI CD ROM, I have tried to download drivers from HP they won't support XP, the drivers I downloaded from NVIDIA are executable programs that Nlite won't accept it seems that only drivers in .inf file format are acceptable. If anyone could steer me in the right direction I would greatly appreciate. I read the articles here but there are technically over my head. Thanksto all who try to help. JIM :blink:

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I am a neophyte to this but I thought I understood what was needed to build a slipstream disc. I have an HP a6230n computer with AMD Athlon 64 x2, NVIDIA Ge Force 6150 Se Graphics card, NForce serial ATA controller and network controller, ATAPI DVD A DH16A3L SCSI CD ROM, I have tried to download drivers from HP they won't support XP, the drivers I downloaded from NVIDIA are executable programs that Nlite won't accept it seems that only drivers in .inf file format are acceptable. If anyone could steer me in the right direction I would greatly appreciate. I read the articles here but there are technically over my head. Thanksto all who try to help. JIM :blink:
Hi Jim,

although you obviously have posted into the wrong thread, I try to help you.

Since you don't have a RAID array (connection between more than 1 hdd) within your nForce 430 chipset computer, you will be able to get Windows XP installed without slipstreaming any driver.

If you want to integrate the nForce chipset drivers nevertheless, download this package, unzip it by using a tool like WinRar or 7-zip and choose the "multiple driver integration" option of nLite. Additionally you can slipstream the other needed device drivers (graphics card, printer etc.).

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Can you suggest me what it the most _stable_ driver for an old Nforce3 based PC with SATA Raid-0 setup? I've read the 1st post (honestly, I think it's the best general post about nforce sata drivers on any forum), but on this PC, I randomly get instant restarts on my current setup, which uses 6.95 legacy drivers and nForce Unified Remix 11.16. I've tried 6.99 legacy, and it was the same. For years I had a stable system, but now I had to reinstall XP, and I don't know which driver was installed on (maybe official 5.11). Performance really doesn't matter, since I would like to use this computer for work, not gaming. Maybe I have problems with nForce chipset drivers, but since computer doesn't produce any error output just restarts I don't know (I don't use Ethernet and Audio drivers at all).

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Can you suggest me what it the most _stable_ driver for an old Nforce3 based PC with SATA Raid-0 setup? I've read the 1st post (honestly, I think it's the best general post about nforce sata drivers on any forum), but on this PC, I randomly get instant restarts on my current setup, which uses 6.95 legacy drivers and nForce Unified Remix 11.16. I've tried 6.99 legacy, and it was the same. For years I had a stable system, but now I had to reinstall XP, and I don't know which driver was installed on (maybe official 5.11). Performance really doesn't matter, since I would like to use this computer for work, not gaming. Maybe I have problems with nForce chipset drivers, but since computer doesn't produce any error output just restarts I don't know (I don't use Ethernet and Audio drivers at all).
Due to the big variety of different nForce3 chipsets and mainboard BIOS versions there are no "best" and "most stable" drivers for all of them.

According to my knowledge the nForce IDE drivers v.6.99 generally are the best choice for nForce3 chipsets, but you probably need a nVRaid BIOS v.4.81 and you have to integrate them into the XP CD by using a tool like nLite. The F6/floppy method doesn't work with these unsigned textmode drivers. If you want to know the reason, look into my guide (first post of this thread).

If you are not able to get the nVRaid BIOS v.4.81, you should take the nForce IDE drivers of the 5.11 chipset driver package.

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Thanks for all the help

just a small update i am using Tyan S2915-E with NVRaid BIOS 9.83 version.

In order for Win XP SP2 x64 to work i needed to work with 9.24 release , older driers are not working

Thanks for posting the working nForce chipset driver package version, which might help other users with the same mainboard.

Which is the exact nForce chipset name of your mainboard? Is it the nForce Professional 3000 series?

Edited by Fernando 1
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According to my knowledge the nForce IDE drivers v.6.99 generally are the best choice for nForce3 chipsets, but you probably need a nVRaid BIOS v.4.81 and you have to integrate them into the XP CD by using a tool like nLite. The F6/floppy method doesn't work with these unsigned textmode drivers. If you want to know the reason, look into my guide (first post of this thread).

If you are not able to get the nVRaid BIOS v.4.81, you should take the nForce IDE drivers of the 5.11 chipset driver package.

I would say that for MSI Neo2 Platinum and XP 32-bit, using dual-core Athlon64: 6.99 is _not_ stable, neither 6.95. What I know is 5.10 _is_ stable (maybe 5.11 too), but I have no information from other versions. With 6.99 or 6.95 I got 1-2 instant restart or BSOD every day, when working with 3D Studio Max, although it was stable for light gaming or easy applications.

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