Are nForce 5xx drivers needed to be pre-added for NON RAID setups?

[videobruce]

I glanced through the thread regarding pre-adding nForce 570 drivers to a nLite installation, but it just seems to apply to using the drives in RAID setups which I don't. I been having bootup delay problems and now quirky things happening when I was re-installing the O/S.

My situation is this:

1. Non RAID use,

2. Two SATA drives,

3. Both drives have the first partition active (and bootable) with a O/S installed,

4. Both drives have a 2nd extended partition (not active),

5. Same O/S is on both drives (done purposely so I can boot to the other drive if the 1st drive has a problem without using a DOS utility or a bootable CD).

6. Drive boot order is changed within the Bios (latest version),

7. MB is a Foxconn N570SM2AA,

8. XP Pro w/sp2 nLite install (with little deleted).

Problem is;

Corruption of possibly the MBR and/or both O/S's due to dual O/S's installed. Drive letters get changed, an additional 20+ seconds delay is added to the "Windows is starting up" portion of the boot when both drives are connected. If I remove one or the other drive, there is no problem.

I just went to wipe, reformat and re-load the O/S on the 2nd drive. Before I procedded I found the 2nd partition was labled as the 1st partition © and it showed active when it was not (no O/S ever loaded). The drive labels that were named within Windows did follow the partition number though. Instead of;

C: Partition 1, Backup 1 (active)

D: Partition 2, Archive 1

It was;

C: Partition 2, Archive 1 (active)

(someother drive letter): Partition 1, Backup1

Hopefully that made some sense. So, do I need to add these drivers before the O/S install? Input please.

Edited January 16, 2009 by videobruce