Raid with XP and no Floppy - problem

[johnhc]

Spinner, please give Asus a call or send them an e-mail. Do you find a floppy utility on your AusRock (whatever) CD? You may need to run the utility, then copy the files from the floppy. Good luck, John.

[Spinner]

Spinner, please give Asus a call or send them an e-mail. Do you find a floppy utility on your AusRock (whatever) CD? You may need to run the utility, then copy the files from the floppy. Good luck, John.

I've now sent them an email; we'll see when or whether they actually reply!

There was no floppy utility that I could see on the motherboard support CD.

Thanks,

Spinner

[johnhc]

Spinner, I DLed the Asus manual for your MB and have some questions. In the BIOS there is a page that seems to tell you what drives are detected. Have you looked at this to see if the BIOS has detected your SATA drives? When you open the support CD, the first page looks like it has a Utilities tab. Have you explored this tab to see if there is a text mode driver utility? I also found your post on the Asus forum. Looks like less than help there. Have you tried calling Asus support at 812-282-2787. I think you are getting down to a driver or hardware problem. Good luck, John.

[Spinner]

Spinner, I DLed the Asus manual for your MB and have some questions. In the BIOS there is a page that seems to tell you what drives are detected. Have you looked at this to see if the BIOS has detected your SATA drives?

It detects them when the onboard SATA controller is set to SATA rather than RAID or AHCI. When it's set to RAID they don't show in the BIOS but do show in the AMD RAID utility.

When you open the support CD, the first page looks like it has a Utilities tab. Have you explored this tab to see if there is a text mode driver utility?

Yes, I've looked there, but there isn't anything.

I also found your post on the Asus forum. Looks like less than help there.

Yeah, I'd like to take the opportunity to thank you for your help - it's been much more supportive than their responses.

Have you tried calling Asus support at 812-282-2787.

Not yet; I'm just dreading having to sit through all the obvious suggestions they make, as exemplified by the email below:

Sir, please enter the BIOS, and then set the "onchip sata type" as RAID, press F10 to save the changes and exit. And then you can enter the AMD FastBulid utility, please press Ctrl+F during the post to display the main menu of the utiltiy, select the RAID you want, then you need a floppy disk to store the raid driver, before installing the windows, press F6 to load raid driver. It will hint you at the bottom.

Hopeless response - I've forwarded it to the manager to ask for better service. I may end up having to call them, however.

Thanks,

Spinner

[johnhc]

Spinner, you are welcome. I agree with your frustrations with the canned tech support responses. At least, if you can get them on the phone, you can say right then that the response is not useful. I am planning a new build and with your experience, I will try my best to avoid Asus. Please keep us informed. Good luck, John.

[Spinner]

Spinner, you are welcome. I agree with your frustrations with the canned tech support responses. At least, if you can get them on the phone, you can say right then that the response is not useful. I am planning a new build and with your experience, I will try my best to avoid Asus. Please keep us informed. Good luck, John.

Just tried phoning them, only to find out they do not offer support for motherboards over the phone, at least in the UK! Tried their barebones PC line instead, but got cut off due to 'an unusually high volume of calls'.

(Off-topic: I didn't realise they pronounced Asus A-soos. At least I've learnt something.)

[Coreyz]

I am having the same issue with windows not recognizing the drives that are set up for raid 0. I am trying to install Windows XP Pro 64 bit onto a Gigabyte GA-MA700GP-UD4H mother board. I have downloaded the most recent raid drivers from http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/Motherb...-bit)#anchor_os for an AMD Phenom X4 processor. I had no problems at all integrating the raid drivers into the bootable disk. It all loads fine along with the drivers for Windows Xp Pro 64 bit. I have configured the OnChip SATA Controller (ENABLED), OnChip SATA Type (Raid), OnChip SATA Port4/5 Type (As Sata Type). On the RAID configuration fast build utlility in the motherboard it shows both of my 320GB Western Digital hard drives RAID mode 0 Stripe Block size 64KB. Thank you for having these forums. It is very helpful.

[johnhc]

Coreyz, please attach (not paste) your Last Session.ini. Make sure to always start with a fresh copy of your CD files/folders, do all your work in one nLite session and integrate only one SP. Please report when you have a solution, so others can benefit. I DLed your drivers. Did you move the TXTSETUP.OEM and the AHCIX64 files into the X64 folder before you ran nLite? Enjoy, John.

[Coreyz]

I'm not sure where to locate the Last Session.ini , Under C:\Program Files\inLite\Presets folder I found Last Session Configuration Settings file and have attached that. I did not move the raid driver files into the X64 before running nLite, I used the nLite utility to integrate them into the file before burning.

Last_Session.ini

[johnhc]

Coreyz, please see my attached screen shot of how your RAID driver folder should look. Point nLite to AHCIX64.INF. I don't understand what this is in your Driver section - D:\Other\GSATA\Floppy32\xraid_f.inf,J_I386. You certainly do not want any 32 bit drivers in x64. Fact is, I do not understand what any of your drivers are. Either you changed all the folder/file names or I DLed the wrong drivers. I see you are running nLite under 32 bit XP. This will probably work as long as you do not integrate an SP. Does your x64 original CD have SP2 integrated by MS? You can find your latest Last Session in your source folder after running nLite. All are saved in the Preset folder with date stamps. Enjoy, John.