[mjswooosh]

DrTweak, on Jul 19 2005, 10:54 PM, said:

I have tried this with the SATA drivers from Nvidia Release 6.53, it worked , Motherboard is an A8N-Sli Deluxe. just needed to change nvatabus.inf to nvraid.inf and it worked without a hitch
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

What do you mean you "changed" the nvatabus.inf to nvraid.inf?

In case DrTweak doesn't check back any time soon, does anyone else care to let me know what he meant by this?

[FatalSaviour]

Ok, some information that may be useful to you then:
It's an Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe (nForce 4 SLI chipset), and the raid array is a RAID 0 SATA with 2x 80gig Seagate 7200.7s. I'm using the 1013 bios, which has the nvraid 4.84 bios.
I didn't remove any drivers with nLite, not MS or any others.
I used Forceware AMD 6.66 (32-bit).
I integrated the SATAraid subfolder for the Textmode driver.
I made no modification to the driver subfolder (I was going to edit the Txtsetup.oem as you suggested, but thought it looked like a bit too much hassle, and thought I'd give it a whirl and see if it worked without editing first.
I can't quite remember, but I'm 90% sure I just pointed nlite to the Sata_ide drivers first, and then the Sataraid drivers 2nd (I need both sets, as I also have a Maxtor 250gig on the 3rd controller for storage). I did select all the options on nlite, tweaking etc. but for the most part I left these unchanged and just skipped past them. I added my cd key, network name etc. but didn't make any huge changes. Just let me know if I can provide any more information other than this.

On a side note, is there a way to get rid of the US language, and just install the UK bits? I can add the UK, and tell it to use it, but I can't seem to find the US language to remove in nlite. I'm thinking it uses the US language during install, but I'd like to remove it if possible.

This post has been edited by FatalSaviour: 08 September 2005 - 02:58 PM

[FatalSaviour]

I think Dr Tweak means that he just changed the name of the .inf file.

[FatalSaviour]

Btw, I completely sympathise with you woosh. It seems that no (semi) cutting edge system that I put together these days is completely problem free. It's rather annoying....

[dale5605]

@fatalsavior, that's nvidia for you...

@Fernando
I seriously doubt his "missing dll" problem is related to my method in any way.

Using my method I get absolutely no missing file errors whatsoever, no problems with windows, no errors or question marks or anything weird in the device manager, nothing wrong whatsoever.

And why do you think there is any harm in removing those windows ide drivers? It doesn't hurt the system like you imply it would. My computer runs better without them. If you have a nvidia chipset why would you want to keep VIA, Intel, CMD, etc. drivers in there? They do no good at all on a nvidia chipset, and you could have absolutely no use for them whatsoever. So I fail to see the concern here.

[FatalSaviour]

I see both POVs. For me, removing all other IDE drivers seems like a harmless exercise, if I'm going to install a new board, then it's likely I'll format and use a fresh version of windows. With the A8N-sli deluxe, it's unlikely I'll ever need any more storage controllers, so I'm not going to miss them.
For people that don't know what they're doing however, I suppose it could lead to problems, removing more than necessary, dependencies on other system devices. IDE controller drivers are one of the things I'd feel very comfortable removing, it's almost a dead cert you won't be needing them in the future. Is there any disadvantage at all of removing them?

[Fernando 1]

mjswooosh, on Sep 8 2005, 08:14 PM, said:

Fernando & Dale...do either or both of your Device Managers show the SCSI & RAID Controller as "Unknown Device"?  I'm wondering if removing the standard SCSI/RAID drivers with nLite causes this Device Manager issue?  Or does your Device Manager correctly display NVRAID?

1. As long as I integrated the nVraid drivers by [OemInfFiles]-method, I have never had any yellow question mark or an "Unknown Device" within the Device Manager. The Device Manager always showed the correct NVIDIA nForce4 Serial ATA Controller and the correct NVIDIA nForce Raid Class Controller.
2. Today I have tested to integrate the nVRaid drivers with nLite Beta6 without any "handmade" changes posted within post 1, but with the removal of the standard SCSI/Raid drivers by nLite. Result: Endless reboots. So this is not the trick for an easy nVRaid integration for everyone.
As a second test I just deleted the ATAPI.SYS (as atapi.sy_) from the I386 folder and the standard SCSI/Raid drivers. Result: Endless reboots again.

So the search for the exact combination of removing special drivers and doing special settings to prevent any "handmade" changes is not yet finished.

[nuhi]

It's not SCSI drivers that are connected, it's the IDE drivers.
Best would be to remove both.

[Fernando 1]

nuhi, on Sep 8 2005, 11:20 PM, said:

It's not SCSI drivers that are connected, it's the IDE drivers.
Best would be to remove both.

I cannot find a special option to remove the IDE drivers by nLite. There was only a combination of SCSI drivers and something else and I removed that combination.

[mjswooosh]

FatalSaviour, on Sep 8 2005, 01:01 PM, said:

I think Dr Tweak means that he just changed the name of the .inf file.
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Why bother doing that? The missing file that is needed to do the install this way is called nvatabus.inf, right? So, I don't understand why he'd rename it...

[mjswooosh]

dale5605, on Sep 8 2005, 01:15 PM, said:

@Fernando
I seriously doubt his "missing dll" problem is related to my method in any way.
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yeah, just to clarify, I never experienced the "missing dll" problem using your method. I experienced the "missing dll" issues during my first couple attempts at using the OemInfFiles method. My last attempt, however, at using the OemInfFiles method went through perfectly. Unfortunately, Device Manager still shows the "Unknown Device" in the SCSI & RAID DEVICE section....

[mjswooosh]

dale5605, on Sep 8 2005, 01:15 PM, said:

Using my method I get absolutely no missing file errors whatsoever, no problems with windows, no errors or question marks or anything weird in the device manager, nothing wrong whatsoever.
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

This is the part that still has me stumped. I seem to be able to get the system to load just fine using BOTH methods, but for whatever reason Device Manager still gives me an "Unknown Device" in the SCSI & RAID DEVICE section. UGH. I keep thinking I must be doing something wrong, but I've honestly followed both methods through several times exactly as shown and continue to have this issue....

[mjswooosh]

Fernando 1, on Sep 8 2005, 03:31 PM, said:

nuhi, on Sep 8 2005, 11:20 PM, said:

It's not SCSI drivers that are connected, it's the IDE drivers.
Best would be to remove both.

I cannot find a special option to remove the IDE drivers by nLite. There was only a combination of SCSI drivers and something else and I removed that combination.
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The IDE drivers can be removed individually in nLite's HARDWARE section (not in the DRIVERS section).

So I guess I'm the only one with this "Unknown Device" issue in Device Manager, huh? WTF am I doing wrong?

[FatalSaviour]

mjswooosh, on Sep 8 2005, 11:50 PM, said:

Fernando 1, on Sep 8 2005, 03:31 PM, said:

nuhi, on Sep 8 2005, 11:20 PM, said:

It's not SCSI drivers that are connected, it's the IDE drivers.
Best would be to remove both.

I cannot find a special option to remove the IDE drivers by nLite. There was only a combination of SCSI drivers and something else and I removed that combination.
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The IDE drivers can be removed individually in nLite's HARDWARE section (not in the DRIVERS section).

So I guess I'm the only one with this "Unknown Device" issue in Device Manager, huh? WTF am I doing wrong?
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Wooosh, what board have you got. I believe you've posted it somewhere, and I think it may have been an A8N-sli deluxe, but I may just be making that up... If so, is that the only unknown device that you have in the system. If you right click, properties etc. and go to the device ID, what's the string that it gives you there? My current train of thought is that it's nothing to do with the RAID array, and it's the ATK 0110 Acpi Utility, the driver for which is part of Asus's AI overclock software (you don't have to install it all, just extract it and point windows to the driver). However, I may have got this all wrong, and just gone off on another of my ramblings...

BTW, I'm well aware that this has nothing to do with SATA, RAID, or any serious device issues for that matter. Do you have any 'known' devices showing in device manager, namely Nvidia nForce RAID Class Controller and Nvidia nForce4 Serial ATA RAID Controller. If so, that should be your lot and it wouldn't surprise me if windows has placed the Acpi Utility there just to play silly b*ggers with you.
Hope this is of some help

This post has been edited by FatalSaviour: 08 September 2005 - 05:03 PM

[mjswooosh]

FatalSaviour, on Sep 8 2005, 04:00 PM, said:

mjswooosh, on Sep 8 2005, 11:50 PM, said:

Fernando 1, on Sep 8 2005, 03:31 PM, said:

nuhi, on Sep 8 2005, 11:20 PM, said:

It's not SCSI drivers that are connected, it's the IDE drivers.
Best would be to remove both.

I cannot find a special option to remove the IDE drivers by nLite. There was only a combination of SCSI drivers and something else and I removed that combination.
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The IDE drivers can be removed individually in nLite's HARDWARE section (not in the DRIVERS section).

So I guess I'm the only one with this "Unknown Device" issue in Device Manager, huh? WTF am I doing wrong?
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Wooosh, what board have you got. I believe you've posted it somewhere, and I think it may have been an A8N-sli deluxe, but I may just be making that up... If so, is that the only unknown device that you have in the system. If you right click, properties etc. and go to the device ID, what's the string that it gives you there? My current train of thought is that it's nothing to do with the RAID array, and it's the ATK 0110 Acpi Utility, the driver for which is part of Asus's AI overclock software (you don't have to install it all, just extract it and point windows to the driver). However, I may have got this all wrong, and just gone off on another of my ramblings...

BTW, I'm well aware that this has nothing to do with SATA, RAID, or any serious device issues for that matter. Do you have any 'known' devices showing in device manager, namely Nvidia nForce RAID Class Controller and Nvidia nForce4 Serial ATA RAID Controller. If so, that should be your lot and it wouldn't surprise me if windows has placed the Acpi Utility there just to play silly b*ggers with you.
Hope this is of some help
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'm using the BFG nFORCE4 Ultra board. The "unknown device" appears underneath the SCSI & RAID DEVICE section. It is the only unknown device in the Device Manager. The ID string for it is: ACPI\_NVRAIDBUS\3&2411E6FE&0

So, it appears that the system at least knows it is an nVIDIA RAID device! (can u detect my sarcasm?) What I don't understand is why I cannot use the Update Driver option to successfully load the drivers? I also tried loading the drivers using the 6.66 package within Windows but that didn't work either. Basically, it's as if Device Manager knows there is an NVIDIA RAID controller but something is preventing it from letting me load the correct drivers. This makes me think that I am somehow doing something wrong with one of the .inf files during the nLite CD creation phase and this is causing some kind of error telling the system that the drivers are actually located somewhere where they are actually NOT located (or something like that). But, then, even that wouldn't explain why I can't just use the 6.66 driver package within windows, would it?

The relevant known devices as they appear in my Device Manager:

Disk drives:
NVIDIA STRIPE 372.61G

IDE/ATA ATAPI CONTROLLERS:
NVIDIA nFORCE4 Parallel ATA Controller
NVIDIA nFORCE4 Serial ATA Controller
NVIDIA nFORCE4 Serial ATA Controller

SCSI and RAID Controllers:
***Unknown Device*** with ID string of ACPI\_NVRAIDBUS\3&2411E6FE&0

Sound, Video, and Game Controllers:
NVIDIA® nFORCE™ Audio Codec Interface

System Devices:

nForce4 Hypertransport Bridge
nForce4 PCI-Express PCI Root Port
nForce4 PCI-Express PCI Root Port
nForce4 PCI-Express PCI Root Port
nForce4 PCI-Express PCI Root Port
NVIDIA nForce PCI System Management
**********************************
Unless I'm mistaken there should be more than one nVIDIA entry under the Sound, Video, & Game Controller section. I'm also missing an ethernet/lan adapter entry even though I have repeatedly tried to integrate it. On the plus side, the drivers for my Gigabyte Radeon X800 XL successfully integrated and installed and DO appear in the Display Adapters section.
**********************************

Thanks for all the input! I'm a little frustrated but am actually having a little fun with this. It's certainly providing a few laughs at nVIDIA's expense, even if I'm the one that's dumb enough to spend this much time beta testing their hardware for 'em!

This post has been edited by mjswooosh: 08 September 2005 - 06:11 PM

[mjswooosh]

ok, I'm starting to think I must be doing something wrong during the nLite creation phase. Here's the process I've used:

1. nLite 1.06b --> int. RyanVM's hotfixes, int. nFORCE4 6.66 / ATI Catalyst 5.8 / Netgear WG311T wi-fi drivers, remove WINDOWS SCSI/RAID & IDE drivers (& a bunch of other stuff. Final nLited WindowsXP size = 295MB). I add all 4 "patches" and several of the tweaks. I use "FullUnattended" and "Oem Preinstall".

During the integrate section I point directly to the nFORCE .inf files in the AudioDrv, Ethernet, SATARAID, sata_ide, and SMBus sub-folders.

2. Here is the relevant file structure for my finished nLite XP cd: X2PVOL_EN\$OEM$\$$\OEMDIR

3. OEMDIR Folder Contents: idecoi.dll, nvatabus.inf, nvatabus.sys, nvcoi.dll, nvide.nvu, nvraid.inf, nvraid.sys, nvraidco.dll
(all files copied directly from the 6.66 SATARAID sub-folder except the nvatabus.inf which was copied from PATARAID sub-folder)

4. Then I go to the X2PVOL_EN\I386 sub-folder and modify the WINNT.SIF file as instructed with the following 2 lines as shown:

OemDriverPathName = "%SystemRoot%\OemDir"
OemInfName = "nvraid.inf","nvatabus.inf"

5. I don't use nLite to create an ISO. I use the Microsoft Corporation.img file and burn the CD in Mode 1 in NERO.

******************************

I honestly don't see what I'm doing differently than the rest of you guys so am a bit of a loss here!

Thoughts: am I somehow creating a faulty folder/sub-folder structure? Does my CD directory structure somehow look differently than it should? Do I need to copy the files from PATARAID folder instead of the SATARAID folder into the OEMDIR? Does it make a difference if you use the files from the SATARAID folder or the PATARAID folder? I wouldn't think it should matter as long as you make sure to copy the nvatabus.inf file as well. Do I need to modify and/or rename any of the .inf files?

Once I get into Windows I continue to have the "Unknown Device" in the SCSI and RAID Controllers section as well as missing an ethernet/lan device entry. I feel like I must somehow be mis-directing the .inf file during the nLite creation phase so that when windows looks for these driver files it is looking in the wrong place.

Ahhh...fun, fun, fun with nVIDIA RAID!!!

EDIT: I just noticed that for some reason when windows first starts it actually identifies it as a "SCSI Device" down in the System Tray. When I try to use the Update Driver section it also identifies it as a "SCSIAdapter". Then, after manually trying to install the 6.66 driver package it identifies it as NVIDIA RAID CLASS device in the system tray (but still "SCSIAdapter" in Device Manager when I try to use update driver). Not sure if this is significant, but I thought I should mention it.

This post has been edited by mjswooosh: 08 September 2005 - 06:55 PM

[FatalSaviour]

Hmmm, very bizarre. I'm afraid I can't be much help for now (It's 2am here now and I've done 40miles of cycling today...) but I'll just contribute a little...
Should there be any nvidia related bits in Sound, Game etc.? Certainly not sound I should imagine, Nvidia didn't incorportate sound into the NForce4 did they, I know on the Asus and most other makes, (all apart from MSI I believe) Realtek 850 codecs were used, so I would start by not integrating them. (AFAIK anyway - please correcy/flame me if I'm wrong).
When you try and integrate the E'net drivers, does nlite add them, but when you come to install windows, they've disappeared, or does nlite complain from the start. For me, it was just a simple case of integrate, et voila! they worked. Certainly when you come to install the driver package in windows, you should be able to get these installed. Have you tried installing them in safe mode?

[dale5605]

Don't integrate Sata_ide folder also lol. That will probably only cause you problems. Just integrate sataraid folder with nvatabus.inf added.

I'm pretty sure that is your problem because windows can't properly integrate duplicate files. And when you are integrating both those folders they are all duplicate files. So the result is probably some kind of hybrid driver which manages to allow you to use your raid array but can't indentify properly in device manager.

Oh and just a small tip, delete the "NAM" folder inside the "ethernet" folder before you integrate the ethernet driver. It is just the crap installer for nvidia's crap "hardware" firewall. Takes up a lot of space.

This post has been edited by dale5605: 08 September 2005 - 07:14 PM

[FatalSaviour]

Very strange, because that's exactly what I did, as mentioned, without modifying the Txtsetup.oem, or creating an OEM dir, yet, windows works absolutely lovely...up to the occasional restart. Checking in device manager, all drivers provided by nvidia, and all seem ok.
Have you tried an install of the drivers in safe mode yet wooosh?

[FatalSaviour]

dale5605, on Sep 9 2005, 02:10 AM, said:

Oh and just a small tip, delete the "NAM" folder inside the "ethernet" folder before you integrate the ethernet driver. It is just the crap installer for nvidia's crap "hardware" firewall. Takes up a lot of space.
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Does nlite copy that folder then, even if you just point it to the Ethernet driver? You learn something new every day.