Getting Closer - Problems with RAID Drivers

[mmarable]

First, i want to thank everyone for thier examples, ideas and help here. I've managed to get the beginnings of an XP install working with the help.

I've run into a problem with the mass storage/RAID drivers in Text Mode setup of XP. I think it's an easy fix, but I'm just not sure where to look now.

I have an XP setup that has the drivers for a Promise FastTrak ATA RAID card slipstreamed in (using XPCreate to do the job). Anyway, the WinPE portion works like a charm, but after it reboots into the XP install, setup halts when it cannot find the FastTrak.sys driver.

The driver is sitting compressed (.SY_) in the I386 folder of the XP files. I thought that I might just need to copy the uncompressed file there as well, but when I tested this in VirtualPC I fired it up using a basic WinPE disk and found that the compressed driver wasn't in the $WIN_NT$.~BT folder on the hard drive like I thought it would be. Even if I put the uncompressed one in I386, it doesn't look like it's going to be copied over anyway.

So, now I'm confused. How can I get the driver to load, if setup didn't copy it to the hard drive? The drivers work when I just use my original unattended CD, so I don't get why it isn't working now.

Where am I going wrong?

[ChrisBaksa]

Unattend setup is a art all it's own.

You need to create a structure off your I386 directory Called $OEM$ in there will be a dir called TEXTMODE (there are a few directoried under this.)

This is fully explained in the OS setup docs.

You will also need to modify your Unattend.txt to add the additional driver support.

Basically... the setup pulls the drives from this DIR and uses it during setup.

Here is an example for an HP DL360G3 with a 5i controller.

Don't forget the IDE line. You need it when adding adding mass controller drivers manually.

[MassStorageDrivers]

"Smart Array 5300 Controller"=OEM

"Smart Array 5i, 532, 5312 Controllers"=OEM

"Smart Array 6i, 641, 642, 6400 EM, 6400 Controllers"=OEM

"IDE CD-ROM (ATAPI 1.2)/PCI IDE Controller"=RETAIL

[OEMBootFiles]

CPQCISSM.SYS

TXTSETUP.OEM

The tricky part is Multiple drivers.

You can only have one txtsetup.oem file in that dir. So if you need more than one driver, you myst manually "mung" the settings into a single txtsetup.oem file. It's a b***h.

Chris

[Br4tt3]

In regards to adding support for RAID controllers in WinPE:

Hmm, have a question regarding the way to add mass storage drivers into WinPE 2004...

In the winpe.chm doc it states that the PnP feature will only use the chipset mentioned in the [sCSI] section. This was not the way in the prior version of WinPE, cuz it read and detected every chipset supported by one driver independent of the [sCSI] section entries...

Any1 have a clue why MS has done this=? Just seems as a great pain in the butt compared to the way of doing PnP of the prior WinPE release...

Regards

[The-VOICE]

First, i want to thank everyone for thier examples, ideas and help here.  I've managed to get the beginnings of an XP install working with the help.

I've run into a problem with the mass storage/RAID drivers in Text Mode setup of XP.  I think it's an easy fix, but I'm just not sure where to look now.

I have an XP setup that has the drivers for a Promise FastTrak ATA RAID card slipstreamed in (using XPCreate to do the job).  Anyway, the WinPE portion works like a charm, but after it reboots into the XP install, setup halts when it cannot find the FastTrak.sys driver.

The driver is sitting compressed (.SY_) in the I386 folder of the XP files.  I thought that I might just need to copy the uncompressed file there as well, but when I tested this in VirtualPC I fired it up using a basic WinPE disk and found that the compressed driver wasn't in the $WIN_NT$.~BT folder on the hard drive like I thought it would be.  Even if I put the uncompressed one in I386, it doesn't look like it's going to be copied over anyway.

So, now I'm confused.  How can I get the driver to load, if setup didn't copy it to the hard drive?  The drivers work when I just use my original unattended CD, so I don't get why it isn't working now.

Where am I going wrong?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I, too, have had some issues with the Promise FastTrak100 RAID Controller. Take a look at Promise's TXTSETUP.OEM. Notice the folders where each different OS's drivers are stored. Keep to a consistent folder structure, and I think you'll figure it out.

Snippet from TXTSETUP.OEM:

[Disks]

d1 = "Promise FastTrak Family Driver Diskette", \fasttrak, \

d2 = "Promise FastTrak Family Driver Diskette", \fasttrak, \nt4

d3 = "Promise FastTrak Family Driver Diskette", \fasttrak, \Win2000

d4 = "Promise FastTrak Family Driver Diskette", \fasttrak, \WinXP

P.S. Don't forget the tagfile "FASTTRAK" with no file extension.