[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]

RickSteele, on Feb 2 2006, 11:27 PM, said:

"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.

Quote

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

This post has been edited by Fernando 1: 05 February 2006 - 04:40 PM

[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!

Quote

... 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]

Blub, on Feb 3 2006, 12:05 AM, said:

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]

thornsword, on Feb 3 2006, 03:20 PM, said:

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.

Quote

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?

This post has been edited by Reinvented: 05 February 2006 - 09:48 AM

[Fernando 1]

Reinvented, on Feb 5 2006, 04:12 PM, said:

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]

Tweakin, on Feb 5 2006, 07:33 PM, said:

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).

[Tweakin]

Fernando 1, on Feb 5 2006, 12:51 PM, said:

Tweakin, on Feb 5 2006, 07:33 PM, said:

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).

It results in a blank screen after the first reboot durring an install. Right after formating and loading setup files, it reboots, then just goes to a blank screen. There is no cursor blinking (very important).

I had given someone one of my older raptors to use and just picked up a new one recently. So, besides the raptor, the system has been up and running for quite some time without problems. The new raptor has been tested as well, just not in a raid setup.

The PSU has plenty of juice. It's an Antec NeoPower 480.

I am overclocking but the system is most certainly a rock. I have installed Windows and linux countless times (I do a lot of software and hardware testing) on this system with the current overclock without any issues. I would like to avoid reseting the clocks and having to redo them if at all possible

I think I may have found something. This MS KB article seems to describe my problem perfectly.
http://support.micro...kb;en-us;314503

So maybe it's not slipstream related. I will try fixing the MBR and using WD Data Lifeguard to write zeros to both drives when i get home from the shop.

Edit: Oops, wrong KB link.

This post has been edited by Tweakin: 05 February 2006 - 01:08 PM

[Fernando 1]

Tweakin, on Feb 5 2006, 08:06 PM, said:

I had given someone one of my older raptors to use and just picked up a new one recently. So, besides the raptor, the system has been up and running for quite some time without problems. The new raptor has been tested as well, just not in a raid setup.

Before you gave your old raptor away, did you correctly remove your Raid array? If not, you really should clean your hard disk drives by low level formatting.
Good luck!
Fernando

[Tweakin]

Yup that was the problem. After writting zeros to both drives I tried again (with the version made from nlite 1.0rc6 and the nforce 6.70 drivers) and everything worked fine. Sorry to clog up the thread with useless information

[Reinvented]

Fernando 1, on Feb 5 2006, 08:22 AM, said:

Reinvented, on Feb 5 2006, 04:12 PM, said:

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?

http://us.dfi.com.tw...20RAID%20F6.ZIP

[RickSteele]

Tweakin

Try it with a normal slipstreamed SP2 Setup-F6.

Fernando 1

"I am very curious about your test results."

Just finished a full nlite 1.0 rc6 install; modified-appropriate files copied from SATA and Legacy folders-6.85 integrated-4.3G bootable DVD-RW and it went like clockwork. The ATAPI drives responded-and are responding-very well, as good as or better than MS PNP. The RAID performance is trouble free and certainly no slower. Nero 7.0.14b is a complete bust still though and 6.6 will not do bootable DVD's using makeiso that ships with nlite-must use cdimage; all the file/folder names are in upper case-I really hate that; plus, of course, all the files/folders carry a 2002 time stamp. But, all installs well.

[thornsword]

I do indeed have a Raid BIOS v. 4.84, although I'm using the 704-2 Beta Bios instead of the official BIOS 623-3 I've found the beta bios to be more stable for me. But don't get me started on how I had to loosen my RAM timings just to get stability when I wasn't even overclocking. I used to get blue screens a lot, STOP errors or IRQL errors until I adjusted my RAM timings. I left memtest run for hours and I would only get errors in tests 5 and 8 and I read somewhere that those were do to timings. But thats all behind me now.

Now that my system is stable I decided I would try for the next experiment: RAID. The SATAII RAID hardrive setup has been giving me headaches too, but I look at these things as a challenge. I reinstalled windows over the weekend with my slipstreamed nLite CD following Fernando's instructions to the letter and it worked like a charm. Thanks, Fernando! If only that were the end of things, but its not without new problems too, I now have that annoying "safely remove hardware" icon in the task bar, and I have some unknown devices in device manager that I'm pretty sure weren't there when I used the RAID drivers from the set included posted on DFI's nF4 page. The one I'm most concerned about is a PCI Bridge device, which I assume is related to SLI. But I only have one graphics card right now. Incidently those drivers that I used previsously are the same ones that Reinvented is talking about. They aren't new, the drivers have dates from 2004, but the .zip file was posted on 2006/1/23. I'm going to try to fix the issues above tonight and I'll post here with my results.

[RickSteele]

thornsword

Try updating driver using the ATK2000.INF from the ASUS Ai Booster Utility\Acpi\WIN2000 folder; or DFI's equivalent. Actually this integrates as PNP system using nlite. ASUS Probe also has it. It's for the PCI Standard ISA Bridge. I believe AMD's Cool&Quiet has this inf also; I do not think this particular inf is brand specific.

[Fernando 1]

RickSteele, on Feb 6 2006, 04:41 AM, said:

Just finished a full nlite 1.0 rc6 install; modified-appropriate files copied from SATA and Legacy folders-6.85 integrated-4.3G bootable DVD-RW and it went like clockwork.

Please let us know, which files you used from the LEGACY and the SATARAID subfolder.

thornsword, on Feb 6 2006, 04:36 PM, said:

I reinstalled windows over the weekend with my slipstreamed nLite CD following Fernando's instructions to the letter and it worked like a charm. Thanks, Fernando! If only that were the end of things, but its not without new problems too, I now have that annoying "safely remove hardware" icon in the task bar, and I have some unknown devices in device manager that I'm pretty sure weren't there when I used the RAID drivers from the set included posted on DFI's nF4 page. The one I'm most concerned about is a PCI Bridge device, which I assume is related to SLI. But I only have one graphics card right now. Incidently those drivers that I used previsously are the same ones that Reinvented is talking about. They aren't new, the drivers have dates from 2004, but the .zip file was posted on 2006/1/23. I'm going to try to fix the issues above tonight and I'll post here with my results.

There is no reason to install the old drivers or to reinstall XP:
1. The icon "safely remove hardware" is totally normal (it is shown for hot plugging devices).
2. You can easily install the missing "unknown" devices by giving them the correct nForce drivers. Look into the properties and write here what you see (example: DEV_0057 is the NVIDIA Network Bus Enumerator as a part of the nForce Ethernet controller).

CU
Fernando

[RickSteele]

Fernando

"You can easily install the missing "unknown" devices by giving them the correct nForce drivers."

The nforce drivers will not have this particular solution-for the PCI Standard ISA Bridge-at least not on ASUS boards; is DFI different that way?. My first install using nfirce4 awhile back now had this "unknown device". This is not an "old driver" but is the only driver for this device if that is what thornsword is referring to. If it is wrong WinXP will not install it.
As for the tray icon, I agree with you; it is necessary, except on generic one SATAII disc installs-no other discs attached-this is not hardware RAID. A lot of forum posts around the net I have read ask how to remove this-you can't.

"Please let us know, which files you used from the LEGACY and the SATARAID subfolder."

nvatabus.inf from legacy, nvata.cat, nvuide.exe, nvide.nvu, nvcoi.dll from sata_ide.

The nforce broadband is also quicker-far less DHCP errors in logs after reboot.

This post has been edited by RickSteele: 06 February 2006 - 02:48 PM

[Fernando 1]

RickSteele, on Feb 6 2006, 09:47 PM, said:

The nforce drivers will not have this particular solution-for the PCI Standard ISA Bridge-at least not on ASUS boards; is DFI different that way?.

I know, that users of some Asus boards have an "unknown device" within their device manager. You have already pointed it out. The problem can be resolved by putting the Asus mainboard CD into the CD drive. The missing driver will currently be found. But this has nothing to do with the integration of nForce SataRaid drivers.
With my DFI mainboard I normally have no trouble at all with "unknown devices", unless I have removed too many drivers by nLite.
Thank you for posting the driver details. If you think I should change my guide regarding this special point, please let me know.

CU
Fernando