I did a stupid thing.... deleted chipset / RAID drivers

[Pruz]

Hi all, I've searched the forums but can't find a specific answer, so if anyone can help me, please do....

I used Driver Cleaner to remove the chipset drivers from my Asus A8N-SLI Premium NForce4 board prior to reinstalling another version, but got distracted during the operation and stupidly rebooted the computer.

As the Nvidia SATA RAID drivers also were deleted, now Windows XP wouldn't start due to the SATA drive suddenly "disappearing".

I booted from the WinXP Home disk and then clicked on "Repair" - during the operation it asked for the F6 reinstallation of the SATA drivers from the Asus utils disk - these turned out to be non-WHQL, so now I'm stuck during setup where it's telling me the drivers are not digitally signed. Although I tried installing them anyway, the "Yes/No" dialog box appears just as the mouse/keyboard are not responding, so i can't get past it.

I obtained WHQL drivers through this forum, created an NLite slipstream disk, but I can't get back to the beginning of Setup to install the correct driver - it always reverts to the point I was at before with the non-WHQL driver, so i'm stuck in this loop of always getting stuck at the "Do you still want to continue installing this software?" dialog box prompt.

So- how do i either 1) bypass Setup and restore the last known good point now that the computer can find my hard drive with the RAID drivers installed

2) restart Setup from the beginning so I can use the slipstream XP CD

3) find a way to get the mouse working at the freeze point so at least I can get past the dialog box problem, get XP up and running again and install the original chipset drivers again?

Or is there anything else i can do? I feel so totally stupid right now for creating the whole mess - how can I get out of it?

thanks,

Al

For info - Asus A8N-SLI Premium BIOS ver 1303, AMD FX-55 stock chip, NVRaid SATA connexion in use, 2x 250GB Hitachi striped RAID, WinXP Home SP2 on NTFS C: partition, data storage on F: partition.

[Pruz]

Mission Successful!

I burned the iso again. The new drivers loaded, but then the setup hung on the "Saving settings" point at 9 minutes (seems pretty common with nLite, I was using v 1.4)

I restarted the installation using the original XP Home CD and all went well - I am now back in business!

I found Fernando's guide to using nLite very useful.

Cheers,

Al

[Pruz]

One more thing:

Seems to be a common problem using nLite - after everything was restored, i couldn't get Windows Update to work, nothing would install either manually through microsoft.com, third-party download and manual installation or using Automated update.

I used Dial-a-Fix v0.6 beta (download and info here) to rewrite the .dlls and full MS update functionality was restored.

Hope this helps anyone else who may be unfortunate enough to do the same stupid stuff as me!

[Tarun]

This is why many people advise others to avoid nLite. You're only setting yourself up for more problems than it's worth. Hard drive space is not an issue in this day and age, nor is RAM. A regular install of Windows works perfectly for every purpose needed.

[mark]

Hi Pruz. Nice job on getting your system straightened out. And thank you for explaining what you did to repair it.

Hi Tarun. I don't necessarily agree on what people have in their systems 'this day and age'. I can well imagine that there are a lot of people who don't have middle of the road, never mind top end, systems. My system is over 3 years old at this point and I didn't buy anything that was close to the good stuff and I agree that it will still run XP in it's full blown form. My point of view on nlite is that it will create an install of XP with ease and from a gui and do it with all the updates, SPs, several programs that I use, have settings and tweaks that I like in place and I do remove things that I consider complete fluff or useless to me. There are numerous things I leave in place because 'I might' use them in the future and there are other things I don't touch because I really don't know what damage I might do(I try to know my limits). The initial and main reason I used nlite was because I found the regular install of Windows to be a PITA and the virus I had been trying to get rid of just as big a PITA. It solved two problems at once and added some benefits. Throw in some things I have learned here at MSFN and I haven't had a virus, trojan or anything else on my system(knock on wood). I run a firewall but have only had an antivirus program on it two or three times just to check. Lucky, cautious and a little informed.

DL