ic7: raid, bios, and windows problems

[strossos]

yes, its a doozy. my system specs here: www.cincygeeks.com/strossos/alltogether.htm, i have everything excpet the geforce and the case, im using a geforce 3 right now.


i think bios is the main cause of all my problems so ill just start with that. so far ive tried using drDOS from abits website to make a boot disk, and xp's msdos floppy format thing, both ways have failed to be even reconized as a boot disk with the 1.3 bios on them.. any ideas of what might cause that?

okay, besides that in the bios when i go to enable ide 3/4 for the 2 sata hdds and enable raid it does not see them in the bios at all when selecting boot drives.. when i set the sata ports as ide 1 master and slave it does see them, but when i set up the raid with sata as ide 3/4 and raid enabled in the ctrl+I menue it sees both of the drives unlike the bios and sets them up fine as a raid 0. after that i try to install windows on them and press f7 to get the special raid disk... so far ive tried the disk from intels website, abits website, and the one that came with my mobo... non have them as far as i can tell have been reconized and thus i cant do jack as far as installing windows goes.

however when i set both drives as master and slave and non-raided when installing windows it sees them sepratly and i am able to isntall windows and then it asks me to reboot after coping all the files to the hdd, well after i restart it cannot find a bootdisk or anything like that!! yarg, i even tried installing windows with just one hard drive installed and reconized in bios.. i got to finishing installing windows but on restart it didnt see a boot drive anymore!!

any ideas or help? i really think i just need help flashing the bios, but its not working so far