Integration of Intel's SATA AHCI and RAID drivers

[ojisplayin]

Actually what I am trying to do is fix my little sisters Toshiba Laptop which has Vista. I've tried countless times to do a Factory

Recovery to original, but the application is not on a (say, D) Drive, but on 2 CD's, and it fails on CD #2 each time.

In addition, you could carefully clean the 2nd CD (DVD?) and try again.

Were the Recover "CD's" (DVD's) made from the running OS (see link #3)? Sometimes they are AND sometimes they are supplied.

Also, have you tried this for Vista Recovery (HIDDEN partition)?

1 - https://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/support/jsp/bulletinDetail.jsp?soid=2737864&pf=true

And it says so right here the same thing -

2 - http://en.kioskea.net/faq/4811-toshiba-laptop-reset-to-factory-settings

There's also POTENTIALLY an F8 trick that may work (did on a Dell) -

3 - http://www.geekpolice.net/t18281-toshiba-recovery-partition-hotkey-instructions

A wealth of information about Recovery by Googling

toshiba laptop vista recovery dvd

FWIW, you MIGHT be able to get -1- the Internal Vista Key (not the COA key) and -2- a "special file" and -3- a legitimate download of THAT "Flavor" of Vista (Home, Premium, etc) and reinstall with that as a last resort. Sorry, I can't give links. -OR- see if a friend/neighbor has that flavor Vista Retail DVD. -NOTE- The COA key works with that FLAVOR Vista as well. Best to get it with SP2 Integrated, although (AFAIK) vLite would integrate SP2 for you.

OMG Thank You so Much Submix8c for posting, and looking, for that link (#1)

I don't know how you found that, I searched the Toshiba Forums high and Low for weeks, and never came close to such USEFUL information.

I thought because the Recovery's she had came from Toshiba with her purchase, and they were useless, we were screwed..... But holding

down the "0" at boot, found the (super, super) hidden Recovery Partition and I am currently downloading Win Updates for it now from the desktop!!

WooHoo!! Thank you all so much.

BTW.....Coincidence?? I found my XP install in my File Box tonight. LOL Go figure :<>

[brucewol]

Almost I hope I've had an EVGA Z68 SLI motherboard in a system with dual boot W8 in AHCI mode and XP Pro/32 in IDE mode. I did the installations several months ago when W8 first was released and figured I would deal with the AHCHI IDE problem in the future. Now is the future. I used the drivers mentioned in the beginning of this post. I used >32bit Intel RST textmode driver v11.2.0.1006 WHQL< and official Intel INF "drivers" v9.3.0.1026 WHQL. For the textmode drivers, I loaded them all. With AHCI set, I was able to recognize the sata disks and install XP but when it went to start Windows in the final step, it hung. Will continue to hang when I rebooot. I am able to boot in safemode. Took a look in device manager and there are some drivers missing - network, audio, video - I think the same as when I installed XP in IDE mode. Then I just used the drivers supplied with the motherboard after the initial XP ide install. So trying to figure out how to diagnose the problem.

On another system, I did an install with IDE set and everything worked, so I believe the install XP cd still has integrity. This is an older system, it originally had XP Media center installed, so it's of XP vintage. Device manager said there were problems with audio and video which I expected. I looked in device manager at IDE ATA and noticed that the driver was Intel 82801FB vs 9.9.1002 with a date 10/5/2012. This means it loaded the drivers that were slipstreamed in via NLite. It doesn't look like the board supports AHCI, so I can't see if I my Nlite build was successful for AHCI. on this machine.

Looking at the drivers that evga supplies, they have exe files for chipset and usb 3.0, something that I wouldn't expect the xp cd to have. It looks like if I start the exe to run, it will extract the files for me into user/"my user"/ ... temp based on the log file. If I stop at the extract, I can get to the drivers. If I cancel, then the driver utility deletes them. So I'm going to look at seeing if I can include these via NLite and see what happens. However, in ide mode, this wasn't necessary, so I think I'm grasping at straws.

Am I on to something, any other suggestions? Thanks, The guide at the beginning got me further that anything else I've been able to find on the internet. So I'm hoping that I'm close.

[Fernando 1]

@ brucewol:

Welcome at MSFN Forum!

I used the drivers mentioned in the beginning of this post. I used >32bit Intel RST textmode driver v11.2.0.1006 WHQL< and official Intel INF "drivers" v9.3.0.1026 WHQL. For the textmode drivers, I loaded them all. With AHCI set, I was able to recognize the sata disks and install XP but when it went to start Windows in the final step, it hung. Will continue to hang when I rebooot. I am able to boot in safemode. Took a look in device manager and there are some drivers missing - network, audio, video - I think the same as when I installed XP in IDE mode.

That is quite normal, because Windows XP doesn't have the needed in-box drivers and you haven't integrated them except the Intel AHCI driver and the Intel chipset device INF files.

Since you obviously are able to boot into Windows XP in AHCI mode by skipping the PnP drivers, it would be a good idea to boot XP in safemode, to open the Device Manager and to look for the HardwareIDs of the devices with a yellow mark (right click onto them > "Properties" > "Details" > "Property" > "HardwareIDs").

If you post the HardwareIDs, I will help you to find the suitable drivers for all these devices.

Regards

Fernando

Edited January 31, 2013 by Fernando 1

[brucewol]

SUCCESS!!!! Thanks for the quick reply. I found my problem, it wouldn't boot when I had an external USB CD/DVD drive connected. Not sure why as I used this drive to install XP with the NLite integrations. I can add in the rest of the drivers as long as I can use a USB stick or my internal dvd drive. I had disconnected the internal dvd drive during the install because it's a sata style.

I don't think it was the lack of my board drivers that prevented it from booting. This didn't cause a problem when I did the install months ago with IDE. When I add the drivers in, I'll use safe mode. Not sure if safe mode will allow me running the programs as they come from evga and nividia. Maybe if the drivers are signed. Will be good to know this though.

Again thanks for providing all the information. Nice to be able to breath new life into XP.

[Fernando 1]

SUCCESS!!!! Thanks for the quick reply. I found my problem, it wouldn't boot when I had an external USB CD/DVD drive connected. Not sure why as I used this drive to install XP with the NLite integrations. I can add in the rest of the drivers as long as I can use a USB stick or my internal dvd drive. I had disconnected the internal dvd drive during the install because it's a sata style.

Thanks for your feedback. I am glad, that you succeeded at least.

When I add the drivers in, I'll use safe mode. Not sure if safe mode will allow me running the programs as they come from evga and nividia. Maybe if the drivers are signed. Will be good to know this though.

To boot in safemode means, that the OS uses no driver except the mass storage one.

You succeeded to boot in safemode, because the OS skipped the driver of the external USB CD/DVD drive, which obviously was wrong or not correctly loaded

Enjoy your Windows XP running in AHCI mode!

Regards

Fernando.

[brucewol]

Got a little more insight into my issue with XP failing to boot when external CD/DVD unit attached. It will boot when connected but it depends on the USB ports used on the backpanel. There are 3 clusters of USB ports. A main cluster near the ethernet connections, eSata and Firewire. Another cluster for USB 3.0 which I didn't use since I knew there were no USB 3.0 drivers integrated. And a 3rd set that are USB 2.0. When using this 3rd set, XP wouldn't boot except for safe mode. Using the main cluster it will boot in normal mode. I think I must have used the main set to do the initial install which explains how I was able to use my external CD/DVD drive. Probably should avoid USB connectors on the front of the case until all drivers are installed for the same reason. I'm thinking I can also use this main set to load my additional drivers in normal mode. Thought this info might be useful for you.

[StressedforXP]

Hello, the guide on the first page was very clear and concise about which drivers I should be using and how to implement them to install my Windows XP 32b OS onto my modern computer, But alas I still have no success. I have the Asus Rampage IV Extreme x79 chipset motherboard, and a RAID 0 main drive configuration with two OCZ Vertex 2 SSDs. I currently have Win7 64b running, and wish to dual boot to the old OS for compatibility. My failure comes from the text installation portion of XP (aka the first step). I have tried slipstreaming the appropriate drivers several times with no success. Immediately after finding this article I tried slipstreaming the slightly modded/recommended drivers for x79 in the first post, only to have the exact same error. During the initial setup of windows, regardless of IDE/AHCI/RAID mode configuration, the setup will fail to load a sys file and shut down. In this case "iaStorA.sys" is always missing - the supposedly slipstreamed driver for SATA RAID.

My BIOS settings have no effect on the process in the least, always the failed sys file error. I have even reduced the RAM levels in my machine to a single chip (2gb) as recommended in part 3 of the guide, no success.

The two SSDs being used to run the OS are in the 2 internal SATA 6GB ports of the Intel controller, and the disk drive is connected via one of the 4 internal SATA 3GB ports under the same controller. To erase the possibility of a faulty CD/DVD drive, and the need to try the CD/DVD drive under the Asmedia controller, I have attempted to take the re-imaged XP setup disk (slipstreamed) and install it to boot from a flash drive, using the utility "WinSetupFromUSB". The result, a much faster initial setup load that fast forwards to... the same error "iaStorA.sys cannot be found." I can't bother with hardware compatibility issues yet till this is resolved, clearly my drivers and disks never match up properly to even get me to the select screen for the XP install. What could be the problem? What should I do?

[Fernando 1]

@ StressedforXP:

Welcome at MSFN Forum!

Hello, the guide on the first page was very clear and concise about which drivers I should be using and how to implement them to install my Windows XP 32b OS onto my modern computer, But alas I still have no success. I have the Asus Rampage IV Extreme x79 chipset motherboard, and a RAID 0 main drive configuration with two OCZ Vertex 2 SSDs. I currently have Win7 64b running, and wish to dual boot to the old OS for compatibility. My failure comes from the text installation portion of XP (aka the first step). I have tried slipstreaming the appropriate drivers several times with no success. Immediately after finding this article I tried slipstreaming the slightly modded/recommended drivers for x79 in the first post, only to have the exact same error. During the initial setup of windows, regardless of IDE/AHCI/RAID mode configuration, the setup will fail to load a sys file and shut down. In this case "iaStorA.sys" is always missing - the supposedly slipstreamed driver for SATA RAID.

The installation failed, because you obviously haven't read my guide carefully and tried to integrate a wrong Intel RAID driver into the XP image.

Intel X79 chipset systems do not accept any Intel RSTe driver package, which contains 2 different drivers (=SYS files): the real Intel RAID driver named iaStorA.sys and the additional Intel SCSI filter driver named iaStorF.sys. What your X79 system needs to get Windows XP properly installed is an Intel RST driver pack, which contains just 1 conventional RAID driver named iaStor.sys.

This is what I have written within my guide (= start post) regarding this point:

• For users with an Intel X79 chipset AHCI/RAID system:
  • XP79 chipset users, who want to get XP (32bit) installed in AHCI or RAID mode, should download this special RST driver (the RSTe drivers will not work for the XP installation):
    >32bit Intel RST textmode drivers v10.5.2.1010 for X79<

Solution:

Restart the nLite processing from scratch by copying the content of the clean XP CD into a separate folder of your system (C:\XPCD or similar). Don't load any preset (Last_Session.ini) and integrate just the 32bit Intel RST textmode driver v10.5.2.1010 for X79.

Then let nLite create the ISO file, burn it as bootable image or create a bootable FAT32 formatted USB flash drive.

Regards

Fernando

[StressedforXP]

I have in fact used the drivers specifically from your link. However, I tried again, used a deep disk wiper and tried it EXACTLY as specified... normally all data is stored on another internal drive that was setup just for storage, but this time i put the CD rip, drivers, and nlite re-imaged iso on the C drive, and I managed to get the initial installer working! For some reason loading the drivers into nlite from an external source doesn't seem to work... but regardless i have a new issue. After the installation finished and XP reboots the setup for its first run... during the XP logo load screen I get... a BSOD flash, and it becomes an infinate loop. I tried doing the installation a 2nd time to no success. Ideas?

[Fernando 1]

but regardless i have a new issue. After the installation finished and XP reboots the setup for its first run... during the XP logo load screen I get... a BSOD flash, and it becomes an infinate loop. I tried doing the installation a 2nd time to no success. Ideas?

Try to boot XP in safe mode and look into the Device Manager for yellow marks.

Another advice: Before you are going to install Windows XP, you should unplug all devices (HDDs, USB sticks, SD cards etc.), which are not necessary.

[StressedforXP]

No boot modes work. Tried to clean install again after removing my network card, sound card, and all other hard drives. The same problem persists. I have the on-board audio and Lan controller disabled.

[Fernando 1]

No boot modes work. Tried to clean install again after removing my network card, sound card, and all other hard drives. The same problem persists. I have the on-board audio and Lan controller disabled.

Questions:

1. Did you use an original (= untouched) XP CD as source?
   
2. Did you integrate more than the 32bit Intel RST driver v10.5.2.1010 for X79? If yes, which ones?
   
3. While nLite was going to integrate the Intel textmode driver you got a popup window with the following Intel SATA Controllers:
   a. "Intel® C600 Series Chipset SATA AHCI Controller"
   b. "Intel® C600 Series Chipset SATA RAID Controller"
   If you should have integrated them both, you may redo the nLite work by enabling just the SATA RAID Controller.

[StressedforXP]

I only integrated the single 32 bit RAID driver, not the AHCI - I used a previously slipstreamed XP cd that went from SP2 - SP3.

[Fernando 1]

I used a previously slipstreamed XP cd that went from SP2 - SP3

Was the XP CD, into which just the SP3 had been slipstreamed, an original one (with MS hologram)?

Does the i386 directory of your XP CD contain a file named WINNT.SIF?

[StressedforXP]

I believe it was but I'm not in possession of that original CD - i checked the install disk and yes, it has a file WINNT.SIF