XP Professional and Raid Hard Drives

[sjm1027]

Hi,

Well I completed my build and configured my RAID 1 (Mirroring) drives, Made a disk to help XP figure out the RAID setup and started my install.
Remember this is a NEW system.
I booted with XP in CD Drive and pressed F6 when asked.
Then S for specify floppy, Inserted floppy, pressed Enter, pressed Enter again to tell XP I had nothing else to install with a supplied MFG Disk.
Then The Windows XP License Agreement came up on the screen and I paged down to read it and pressed F8 to Agree

Nothing happens! It just sits there with agreement on the screen... The system is not hung up... I let it sit a while and then hit escape and reboot just to get the same results.

Can anyone help with this problem? Could it be I need to get a FDISK Utility? I saw something about that but since the system is new how would I run RAID FDISK?

Mother board is ASUS A8V Delux and the 2 RAID Drives are Western Digital 36.7 gig @ 10,000 rpm

Thanks
Steve

[Force Flow]

XP can *usually* find drivers. See if you get anything if you don't insert a floppy for the SCSI/RAID drivers.

Did you set up RAID already in the RAID controller BIOS?

You cannot use FDISK for XP if you are going with NTFS (which is suggested). XP's setup has a partitioning and formatting section in the installation.

[QuickSilver]

You also need to have the RAID controller enabled in the regular BIOS. Look in your boot configuration. There should be a setting for SCSI and SATA, of which you would select SATA. There should also be a setting that says something along the lines of "Boot From Other Device". Make sure you have that selected. All the BIOSes will be a little different, but it should be similar.

[sjm1027]

In the BIOS I have:
Onboard Promise controller: enabled
Operating Mode: Raid Mode

My Boot config is:
Floppy first
DVD Second
HDD 3rd

I get to the license agreement in XP and nothing happens from then on... system is not locked up... because esc works fine

Thanks
Steve

[wedor]

If you have one of the newer MS keyboards the f keys are turned off by default, you must turn them back on with the f lock key or they will not function correctly.

[sjm1027]

Originally Posted by wedor If you have one of the newer MS keyboards the f keys are turned off by default, you must turn them back on with the f lock key or they will not function correctly.

I have already used F1, F6 so I think they are working ok. I am using a Logitech

Thanks

[wedor]

Some Logitechs have the f lock key.

[sjm1027]

Originally Posted by wedor If you have one of the newer MS keyboards the f keys are turned off by default, you must turn them back on with the f lock key or they will not function correctly.

Wedor, You hit the nail on the head buddy. In the Bios I noticed a setting for this F Lock. So I rebooted, pressed F6 to do RAID, then as it reboots the Flock changes... So I hit flock and F8 and Viola!!!

Thanks,
You saved me a lot of reading. I had no clue that was a setting.

Thanks
Steve

[wedor]

It's relatively new and if you are not looking for it you can miss it real easy, I've been victimized by this myself.

Glad I could help.