Biostar RAID 0, Endless XP loop Options

[R.Zack.Lewis]

I need some help. I am putting together a system for home/game use and thought a RAID 0 array would be a good choice. I enabled the RAID in BIOS on SATA A primary and secondary. Entered the RAID BIOS and set up the stripe for optimal settings(which sets it up for 64k stripes), cleared the data on the array, saved and rebooted. Went through the XP setup loading the RAID drivers (F6 selected both drivers by pressing S yada yada) XP load seemed clean and fast about 8-9 minutes, no errors no hang ups. System needs to reboot after initial load, so I restart. XP splash screen appears with the green scroll at the bottom, right before you get to the XP desktop system reboots its self. Goes through post and then you get the advanced boot menu from XP. Click on safe mode and still reboots its self. Went through the same set up after formatting the array 2 times and still get the same end result, am I missing something?
System Specs:
Biostar NF4ST-A9 mobo
AMD 3500+
1 GIG of dual channel DDR 400(2 512 modules)
Saphire x800GTO 512MB PCI-X16
500W Aspire PSU
2 WD SATA 2 250GB HDD.

[Fernando]

You are not the only one with this problem. It is due to the fact, that the Microsoft Setup routine do not trust the NVIDIA SataRaid drivers. Although they are accepted during the first (=TEXTMODE) part of the installation and the Raid array is correctly recognized, MS installs at least the wrong MS Standard IDE instead of the correct nForce Sata drivers. Bad consequence: endless reboots.
You can prevent this by 2 different methods:
1. When you have hit F6 at the beginnig of the install, don't take one of the newest nForce SataRaid drivers (off one of the packages 6.66 or higher). Take a driver floppy you have created off the nForce chipset driver package 6.53. You only have to copy the whole content (with the exception of the raidtool) of the IDE\WinXP folder. When you do this, you will succeed with the installation. After you have finished it, you can update your nForce SataRaid drivers - without any problem.
2. The other possibility is the integration of the nForce SataRaid drivers into a bootable CD by using a tool like nLite or CD Creator. In this case you can use the newest nForce SataRaid drivers from the scratch - no later update is necessary.

Here is the solution, if you want to install Windows XP x64:
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtop...indpost&p=87640

CU
Fernando

[R.Zack.Lewis]

You are not the only one with this problem. It is due to the fact, that the Microsoft Setup routine do not trust the NVIDIA SataRaid drivers. Although they are accepted during the first (=TEXTMODE) part of the installation and the Raid array is correctly recognized, MS installs at least the wrong MS Standard IDE instead of the correct nForce Sata drivers. Bad consequence: endless reboots.
You can prevent this by 2 different methods:
1. When you have hit F6 at the beginnig of the install, don't take one of the newest nForce SataRaid drivers (off one of the packages 6.66 or higher). Take a driver floppy you have created off the nForce chipset driver package 6.53. You only have to copy the whole content (with the exception of the raidtool) of the IDE\WinXP folder. When you do this, you will succeed with the installation. After you have finished it, you can update your nForce SataRaid drivers - without any problem.
2. The other possibility is the integration of the nForce SataRaid drivers into a bootable CD by using a tool like nLite or CD Creator. In this case you can use the newest nForce SataRaid drivers from the scratch - no later update is necessary.

Here is the solution, if you want to install Windows XP x64:
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtop...indpost&p=87640

CU
Fernando

Fernando your a life saver thanks this seems to have been all that was needed. I couldn't find anything on this problem. You should send this information to Nvidia, becuase they still haven't responded to my e-mal about this issue. Thanks again