KT7A-R...Can't install WinME on RAID

[FDuck13]

I have a KT7A-Raid BIOS WZ (non-beta) with a T-Bird 1.2G not O/C'ed, 2-128 kingmax 150 mem, GForce 2 GTS. I have removed the rest of my PCI cards. 300 PS

I am unable to install WinME with my 2 Maxtor 30gig 100ata in Raid. I can configure the win setup but as soon as it starts to copy from the cabs I get "unable to read CAB" errors. I can copy the cab files from the cdrom to the HD without problems and I get the same error. However, I was able to install without raid just fine.

My drives are on IDE 3 and 4 master, and have tried Cable select and Master for both. The Highpoint controller can detect both drives as mode 5 on every reboot.


Any ideas???????

[chameleon]

your drives are on raidide1 and raidide2 correct? and both are masters? hmm.. the raid formatting went ok? have you tried anything else like win98se or win2k?

another thing that could be it is that when you first begin setup of win2k it asks to install a third party raid driver, by pressing F6, if you dont do that then it could cause problems for the installation procedure for reading your raid setup correctly.. so I suggest watching out for when winme asks for this or try just installing win2k instead..

[FDuck13]

Yes, both are on sepate raid controllers as masters. I have set the drives to cable select (like Paul's FAQ stated) and also Master.

I have tried to install Win2k as well. I do install the Highpoint drivers on a floppy with the F6. Win2k installs ok (unlike WinMe or Win98) and on the frist reboot it hangs on the "Hit F8" screen.

WinMe never asked for Highpoint drivers and "assumed" that it uses dos mode drivers.


.......losing hair and drinking more Guinness.....

[chameleon]

damn, I'll be doing raid within days ..hope i dont run into this dead end scenerio ..try setting you bios to safe defaults.. and try again

[FDuck13]

Yep.........already did

Thinking my board it bad. Damnit!!

[chameleon]

what happens when you dont use raid and try to install on a regular hdd on ide1 ?

[FDuck13]

Works just fine. That is what i have running now. Everything works great until I install an O/S with raid. BTW, I made my Raid at 64k. Sound right? I have a total of 60gig.

[chameleon]

im still trying to figure out what the optimal cluster size is ..until now im thinking 16k ..and did you format with NTFS or FAT32 ?

[FDuck13]

Fat 32

I also formated at default.

[FDuck13]

Update.....With the new WT110b bios.....all is well. Installed Win2k and WinME on Raid 0.

[ty]

you mentioned that at RAID 0 you had two 30 GIG maxtors (i do too, did we get the same rebate deal?). well, i guess i must have the wrong idea of what raid 0 is because i thought that we gain the performance by striping both drives and having the available size (is that what RAID 0 is?) i tried to do research but nobody discusses whether RAID 0 halves two 30's to on striped 30. btw...i'm going to try a dual boot with win2k on the RAID. one more question, how do i tell what bios i have?

[FDuck13]

Yea, I got one at Circuit City. Stiping is combining 2 drives (30+30=60). Mirroring is one drive for working, one for backup.

To tell what bios you have, when you see your bios come up when you first turn on your pc, look at the bottom. You will see a date (3/3/200) then the bios number. Look fast!!

[ty]

hey...did you mean WZ110b...couln't find WT110b...about two hours before this post yo said that the new wz was unstable for you and you went back to wz final, right?

also a couple more q's since you and I have nearly identical setup (but i have a t-bird 750):

1)what is pauls FAQ

2)did win2k install go ok (ME sucks, too unstable and whenever something crashes in ME the system hangs)

3)what is yourpci arrangement (i think i might have some irq issues because my RAID right now sucks booty, system is almost unuseable while anything is being written to RAID...i have ww...will flash asap)

4)have you been stable with ME at all/ever

5)since you and i have the same 2 maxtors..why did you pick 64k cluster size, it was my impression that smaller was better and FAT32 could handle small clusters with big drives

sorry for all the questions, its just that our setups are almost identical!

[FDuck13]

Yes WZ........

This Bios is what fixed my system. It only updates the Highpoint controller.

http://www.icrontic.com/faqs/kt7faq/kt7faq.htm Paul's FAQ.

I was able to install both Win2k and Me. I was unable to do both without the new beta bios. BTW, I'm running WinME without problems.

AGP
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SBLive 5.1
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3Com NIC


Also about the cluster size........I was the first one i saw. I'm sure there might be a better setting if someone wants to give up the info.

New update.....

I finally was able to play AOE 2 without lockups by disabling AGP 4x and Side Band Addressing . Now I am lockup free.

Once I get everything set........time to OC.

Hope all this bable helps

[FDuck13]

one more thing.....My Q3 and 3DMark scores did not go down due to the 4x and Side Band settings.....

Getting about 8100 oc'ing my GF2 GTS....

Later........