Promise 376, MSI K7N2G-ILSR problem solved

[NeilScarrott]

All,

I thought i'd post this after many hours trying solutions from these forums without success. Hopefully this posting may help others solve a problem in future.

My setup

MSI 6570 (K7N2G-ILSR) Mobo

PC2100 512 MB Crucial RAM (2x256MB Dimms)

Athlon 2400

WD1600 160 GB Sata disk (SATA port 2)

Seagate Barracuda 80 GB disk (SATA port 1)

Seagate 40 GB drive (IDE 3)

Asus 52x CD burner (Primary IDE)

Pioneer 108 DVD burner (Secondary IDE)

Cisco 350 PCI Wireless

Tyan Tacheon 128 MB 9600 PRO Graphics

I recently purchased the WS1600 160 GB Sata drive and intended to migrate from the 80 GB drive to use the 160 GB drive as the primary drive and install XP SP2 onto it from my automated install CD.

After reading various tutorials I got the promise drivers onto the disk via txtsetup.sif

All seemed well and the disk was picked up from the Promise 376 controller.

The text setup completed fine, the first graphical setup completed fine, but after the reboot into the final graphical XP setup I got problems.

Booting into safe mode revealed that when mup.sys was reached, the system hung and rebooted itself and this would repeat.

I thought this could be the promise driver revision and tried various different driver levels, from the original drivers I received with the mobo, to drivers from the MSI website, all with the same problem.

This was extremely frustrating as my previous install worked fine with my 80 GB sata drive so I knew I didn't have any of the memory or power supply issues that others had experienced.

The solution, I stumbled across some internet postings saying they found issues when they repartitioned an NTFS disk drive. Up until getting the 160 GB drive I had always used FAT32 for my disks, but XP insisted on using NTFS for the 160 GB drive so that was what I used.

After loading a Win 98 boot disk and formatting the partition in FAT 32, I carried out the automated windows install (using the Promise drivers supplied with the motherboard) and windows installed without problem (XP SP2).

I do not understand why using NTFS caused problems versus no problems in using FAT 32, perhaps somebody here knows?

Neil

[prathapml]

Hi neil,

Welcome to MSFN forums

It was nice that you thought of posting your solution here.

Well, fact is I got the same MoBo, same processor, and same RAM too.

And my woes with the Promise RAID controller on this damned piece of metal never ends.

The VERY moment I manually install the RAID drivers, my Windows stops responding (yeah, happens right thru the windows generation - tried from Win2k all the way up to WXPSP2 and WS2k3 SP1 beta; and I'm not gonna look at win9x series if its the last thing I had to do). After that, I force a hard re-boot - and from that point onwards, it becomes a matter "sub-judice" to the machine's whims and fancies. It might/might not pass thru the "checking RAID" BIOS screen, and becomes suddenly unstable at the login screen after being fine till then. And then, sometimes is unable to even bootup in safe mode. Trying to boot-up in "Safe mode with command prompt" causes the same hanging you describe - MUP.SYS or some such file is stopping load of all else. Even if I integrate the drivers into my unattended install, the same results turn up. I doubt this is an NTFS vs FAT32 issue, as I've tried that too.

Nopes, tried everything - the only solution in the end that I resort to:

Boot into my Linux partition, and re-format the Windows system partition. And then re-install. And god help me if I dared to install the drivers again - the same thing repeats. So I just keep the RAID controller disabled, since I currently have no need for it. And so, I can't use the SATA capability either, since its tied in to the RAID.

Carried out RAID and SATA-enabled installs for others, but my OWN MoBo is so problematic, what can I do.... But since the MoBo is very good in all other aspects, I put up with it. Tried all the things I could by myself. Searched MSI's own company forums, asked for help from their support staff (but their technical competency of employees where I live, is POOR). Tried Promise (the company) to respond, but they claim that the responsibility is now with MSI, since Promise hasn't shipped me a component "As such". Their drivers don't support other OEM-variants of their products; and they claim no liability. Tried older/newer/testing-level drivers, and beta control panel utils from MSI. Done all I could - No hope until now regarding this. If anybody else has experienced this as well (as indeed the person above has) and has solved their problem, and has a simple solution, I'm all ears to hear it. Thanx.