New Build - SATA, RAID 0, and 200gig Storage - HELP ASAP!!!

[eaglescout]

Hello All! This is my first post here, so be gental...

Thanks in advance to all of you. On with my issues/questions.

I have just received my purchase of the following.

A8N32 - SLI Deluxe
2 x Raptors 74gig
1 - Maxtor 200gig Ultra ATA/133 (storage)
2 * BFG 7800GT's 256mb PCI-e
1 - AMD Athlon Dual 4400+
2 x 1 gig RAM DDR OCZ Platinum 2-3-2-5 T1 Timing
Gigabyte 3DAurora Case Full Tower
Plextor SATA DVD burner
NEC IDE DVD Burner
Floppy (Sony)

With that said here is how I have it installed.
* 2 x Raptors are in RAID 0 in the Bios. I have them installed in SATA 1 and 2 ports. I want them to be my boot drives.
* The Maxtor I want as storage. I have it on the Primary IDE on the secondary connection with the jumper set to "slave". Not sure it that is right.

So you ask what the heck my problem is. Well, here goes...

I can't get the darn things to recognize a primary HHD. When I put the XP cd in to install I press the F6, but it acts like it didn't even recognize the key being pressed. I know the keyboard is working...

Can someone tell me how to set this up. I thought I could figure it out, but I guess not.

I want the 2 raptors as my primary boot device with the OS installed on it. Then I want the maxtor setup as extra storage.

PLEASE Help!!! I'm desprate to get this up and running....

Thank you all so much!!!

[flanzig1]

Might be a little easier to start with a single video card and install the Maxtor after XP is installed(it should be set to master or cable select). Try turning on the system without the XP disc to see if you get the BIOS screen. Also, double check the mobo manual as to where to plug the SATA drives for RAID and if you need to have the SATA drivers on a floppy.

[glc]

For your IDE devices, use 80 wire cables and cable select jumpering. Make sure you have the correct end of the cable plugged into the controller.

You *will* need the RAID drivers on a floppy to install XP on a RAID 0. You have to be patient after pressing F6 - it can take a couple minutes for the box to pop up asking you for the disk.

What are you using for a power supply? Is it SLI-certified?

[eaglescout]

For your IDE devices, use 80 wire cables and cable select jumpering. Make sure you have the correct end of the cable plugged into the controller.

You *will* need the RAID drivers on a floppy to install XP on a RAID 0. You have to be patient after pressing F6 - it can take a couple minutes for the box to pop up asking you for the disk.

What are you using for a power supply? Is it SLI-certified?

The IDE cable is installed correctly. It has a blue connector for the primary its installed on. However I do not have it jumpered in 'cable select' mode. I will do that now.

F6 was taking a LOOOOONG time and until you said that I was assuming it wasn't working. Wheew...feel better about that.

When I got to install the drivers I have created from the mobo cd "create disk". I have the option from "NVIDIA RAID CLASS DRIVER (required)" or "NVIDIA nForce Storage Controller (required)" I chose the first option. Then it comes back with "The file nvrdx64.sys is corrupted". That's it.

With that said, I went to asus support to get the driver from them. I don't see anything for the life of me that says NVIDIA RAID drivers/ it's all Silicon Image RAID 5 or Silicon Image Serial ATA driver. Not to mention I don't know which is the most recent driver. confused on that....

PSU - ENERMAX Liberty 620W - 680W MAX. SLI cert. It's a sweet PSU!!!

Let me know...thanks so much....

[glc]

It sounds like you are trying to use the XP x64 driver - is that what you are installing - 64 bit XP?

[eaglescout]

It sounds like you are trying to use the XP x64 driver - is that what you are installing - 64 bit XP?

Yeah for whatever reason I was trying to install the wrong dang drivers!!! DOH!

I did get everything installed. However, when I installed WinXP SP2, I got an error on reboot. It says, "The File m5287.sys could not be found" Press any key to continue, then it it says could not load, press any key to reboot. Now when it reboots it goes to a dual looking boot up option. WinXP and a WinXP(setup). If I go to the regular WinXP it boots to the desktop, no issues. But if I select the second option it goes into the same loop, throwing the same m5287.sys error.

Any ideas? I can find very little if anything on the error message. I'm at a loss on what to do. Oh yeah now when I try to reboot or shutdown it hangs at "Windows is shutting down..."

Let me know,
Thanks.