PLEASE HELP: Trying to repair WinXP but getting Promise RAID driver errors

[trowand]

Hey, I've got big problems... I built the system in my sig (about a year ago) and it's been running fine but I would get occasional BSODs. I occasionally get "multiple IRP complete requests" errors and the "IRQL not less or equal" errors but I just put up with it and live with them. Well yesterday I was just surfing the web and got a BSOD with the "multiple IRP complete requests" error and the PC started to reboot but when it got to the windows boot screen, the progress bar just remained empty and then I got the black screen that says that windows couldn't boot and it gives me like four or five options such as boot in safe mode, boot with last good configurations, boot windows normally, etc. Well I tried them all and none of the options worked. The same thing happens regardless of which option I choose. The PC restarts, posts, gets to the windows boot screen but the progress bar stays empty and then it again gives me the safe mode boot options page. So I figure that somehow, my Windows installation is corrupt. So I'm trying to repair windows with my WinXP CD. When I boot from the CD the first thing that it asks or requests is if I need to install third party RAID drivers to hit F6 which I do because I have a SATA RAID 0 array and I need to install the Promise Fast Trak 378 drivers from a floppy. Well when I put in the floppy and choose WinXP promise drivers from the disk it reads the floppy and gives me this error: "File \WinXP\fasttx2k.sys caused an unexpected error (1024) at line 2108 in d:\xpsp1\base\boot\setup\oemdisk.c". I tried it numerous times and since my driver disk was giving errors I figured that my floppy was bad, so I made a new floppy with the Promise RAID driver from the Asus mobo CD and tried that but the same thing happened. And if I just hit enter and pass the option (to install RAID drivers), later it says that it can't find a mass storage device. I'm confused. Also, the RAID array is fine. when the PC posts, it checks the array and it says that it's functional. I even entered the FastBuild utility by hitting Ctrl-F and checked everything and it says that my RAID array is working. PLEASE HELP!

[MichaelS]

Since this post is near the bottom, i'll take a stab at it.

Unfortunately the "IRQL not less or equal" error is a very vague. On the other hand, the "multiple IRP complete requests" would indicate that your having I/O problems (as you saw when you tried to do a recovery.

I was doing some Googling, and the only info I was able to come up with is that it could be:

-Norton AntiVirus
-Physical hardware failure (CPU/Ram/Mobo/HDD)
-Too many devices sharing the same IRQ

I suggest checking out the Hardware since it seems like something went awry with a hardware component.

Good Luck,

Mike

[trowand]

Could you elaborate on "too many devices sharing the same IRQ"? That's new to me. How do I check that? Thanks for replying but I'm not too worried about solving the BSODs right now. Currently the priority is trying to find out why the PC doesn't like the Promise 378 RAID Controller driver that I'm feeding it. It's the same exact driver I used when I first built the PC. So why won't it work now? When I was doing some searching for my error codes, I found a couple of PC forums where people with other Asus and Gigabyte mobos were having the same or very similar problem. But it didn't seem like anyone was getting anywhere. I'm going to try a bunch of stuff. I'm going to play around with trying other/newer promise drivers, I'm going to try to reset my CMOS, and if that doesn't work, I'm going to flash to a newer BIOS. Wish me luck!

[Tin]

youre using the Promise RAID....which isnt native to the southbridge on the mobo. sounds like you have some data corruption going on. since the Promise controller isnt controlled by the southbridge...the AGP/PCI lock has no effect on it. youre running at 233FSB....so that means the Promise controller is running out of spec. it should be at 33MHz...but since your running 233FSB...that makes your Promise run at 39MHz. some drives dont mind higher PCI clocks, but some of them just flip out. try backing down your clockspeed. i have a feeling youre going to have to repartition and reformat your RAID set.

[MichaelS]

Great explanation Tin =)

In my opinion, the underlying hardware should be tested since its having problems just copying from a good floppy. With regards to how to tell which IRQs are being used, that would normally be determined via device manager, but it slipped my mind that you can boot into Safe mode on a RAID, sorry. Some BIOS/CMOS's allow you to disable 'Bus Mastering' or 'PCI Sharing' that may help, but it may break some devices.

One way that you can diagnose this, is to remove all peripherals that aren't necessary for booting up. Disable PCI Sharing/Bus Mastering in the BIOS/CMOS if you can, and try to boot into Windows. Another approach would be to test the RAM/CPU/Mobo using your favourite test suite (I use Ultimate Boot CD myself).

Mike

[trowand]

I reset my CMOS by taking the battery out for just under two hours and putting it back in. That didn't help. Then I tried flashing my bios but somehow couldn't figure it out. My Asus mobo has two or three different ways to flash the bios. I can use a file called Asudos with a copy of the BIOS on a floppy but I couldn't get that to work. I also tried doing it with EZ Flash per my mobo manual's directions and that didn't work either. I have a stupid question. When I go to Asus's website to download the latest BIOS and drivers and such, the files on the website are .zip files. I don't put them directly onto a floppy as .zips do I? I've been unzipping them and then putting them on a floppy. I first have to unzip it before I put it on a floppy, right? Because for some reason when I try to use some of my floppy disks, I get a message saying invalid file format. Also, when trying to flash the bios using Afudos and BIOS on a floppy, When I try to boot from it, it doesn't recognize it as a bootable disk. It says something like "remove non system disk and press any key to continue". Do I have to format the floppy in a DOS format and then put this Asudos program and the BIOS on it? I'm going nuts with this. I'm starting to fear that I may just end up removing my CPU to see that it's fried. But if my CPU was dead, then it wouldn't post, right? Also, as far as the overclocking goes, I put everything back to stock speeds.

[trowand]

Well, I tried to fix XP on my RAID array over a dozen times and kept getting the same problems. My motherboard has two different ways to hook up SATA RAID arrays. You can go through an onboard Promise RAID controller (which is what I was trying to fix) or you can go through the ICH5R southbridge and configure an array via Intel's configuration tool. So I decided since the Promise method wasn't working, I'd try the Intel Southbridge method. So I disconnected my HDDs from the Promise controller and moved them to the other SATA ports. But even after configuring the two drives as a RAID array using the Intel RAID configuration tool, I was unable to install XP that way either. Everytime I tried installing Windows, it kept saying that it couldn't find a mass storage device. I tried it a million times and kept getting the same thing. So finally, I tried installing XP with the HDDs seperated (Non-RAID) and it worked! I successfully installed XP via the southbridge SATA ports on one HDD. Then when I finally got into WinXP and checked all of my drives in "My Computer" there was only one 160GB HDD! Where the heck is the other one? So I'm thinking that one of my HDDs must be dead. If you think about it, I couldn't successfully install XP on a RAID array no matter which way I tried it but when I tried to install on just one of my HDDs, it worked and then when I looked in "My Computer" there was only one HDD showing even while two were hooked up. BUT, however, both HDDs were seen by my BIOS and when I configured them as RAID pre-OS using the configuration tools by Promise and Intel they both said that it worked and they were ready to boot. So I don't know. I'll have to test my other HDD. Anyone know how I can do this?