** RAID hook-up won't boot **

[Bill Lane]

Hi All:

I'm installing an Abit KG7RAID Socket A motherboard with RAID & DDR Support with an AMD Athlon 1.2GHz (266MHz FSB) and 256MB PC2100 DDR 184 Pin 32x64 Ram, one stick.

I put a single hard drive on the Primary IDE and a CD Rom on the Secondary IDE both set for cable select. I couldn't put the hard drive on the Primary of the Ultra ATA 100/RAID Primary IDE connector as it couldn't find the drive.

I ran FDISK/MBR, FDISK and set the hard drive to maximum partition and set it active then rebooted and formated C:/s.

Installed Win98 without any cards in the system except the STB Velocity 4400 AGP video card, and I didn't set it up at this point as per the instructions for (KG7 Platform).

tried to Install the AMD-761 Miniport driver, but it couldn't find the Pnpagp.vxd , so I went on line and found it and installed it in Windows/System, then it couldn't find the sucatreg.exe, went on line again but couldn't find it, so I used the Abit setup disk to install the Miniport driver, it installed without any problems.

Then I tried to install the VIA 4in1 service pack (VIA_HyperionPro_V504A), but it wouldn't install either, so I again used the Abit setup disk, and installed thiers, okay so far.

Then I installed the VIA USB driver (VIAUSB2V258-L-M) , okay, then I installed the Microsoft VIA USB Patch (usbf_110), okay.

Then I installed DirectX 8.1 from the Abit setup disk, okay.

Installed STB Drivers and set to 800x600 High True Colors, okay

The instructions said to install the sound card now, but I skipped that and went to the next step. Maybe I should have installed it, but I didn't want any cards in the system till I saw that everything was working right.

Installed HPT370 software from the Abit setup disk, Everything still okay so far.

I shut down and changed the hard drive cable to the Primary of the Ultra ATA 100/RAID and rebooted, It recognized the drive at startup (Black Screen) as WD2200H

Anyway, it won't load Windows, I get the message ....

Boot from ATAPI CD-ROM : DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER.

In The BIOS: Delay IDE Initial (Sec) set to 6

The reason I'm trying to set up this way is, I'll be adding a DVD, NEC 4 Disk Changer and a CDRW to the Primary and Secondary IDE connectors, and at least another hard drive to the Ultra ATA 100/RAID Primary and Secondary IDE connectors, maybe four hard drives altogether.

I hook it back up to the Primary IDE, and it works fine, can anyone point me in the right direction to solve this problem?

I looked at the Device Manager, everything there look great, see link ....

http://home.earthlink.net/~billlane2...properties.jpg

Thanks ahead of time,

Bill Lane

P.S. In the Bios I tried setting the first boot to ATA100RAID, LS120, HDD-0, HDD-1, SCSI, and LAN, but nothing worked.

Power Supply: Real PC Power, ULTRA 550W, TITAN 550, Supports Intel Pentium 4 and AMD ATX ver 2.03 and ATX12v ver 1.3 Specifications.

Dual LED Cooling Fans
2 Serial ATA Connectors
Ultra Cool Aluminum Casing
Smart Fan Design
W/temperature Sensor
550W ATX 12V Power Supply
Shielding tube to reduce EMI

[Bill Lane]

Hi All:

In looking at the manual, it looks like it's trlling me that I need to add two sticks of ram to get this thing to work, I hope I'm wrong.

See link ....

http://home.earthlink.net/~billlane28/board-layout.jpg

Bill Lane

[glc]

No, that's not what it's telling you. Your problem is somewhere in the BIOS settings.

[Bill Lane]

Hi glc:

Well I've been in the manual checking everything that I thought I should change or reset too, but I guess I'll get back in there and go over it again.

Anyway I ordered 3 sticks of ram to fill up the vacant slots, I wanted to do that anyway.

Thanks again,

Bill Lane

[diver203_98]

Win 98 is your problem. You MUST be running Win XP Pro if you want to run RAID because Win 98 doesn't support it, and I don't think XP Home does either but I may be wrong on that. I have RAID "1" and XP Pro.

[Bill Lane]

Hi diver203 98:

I had this motherboard setup in another computer about a year ago running Win98 and everything worked fine.

The difference now is, all the components are different, new power supply, two WD hard drives that were in another computer, but reformatted, only one stick of ram, where I was using two sticks when the board was working, different video card.

For reasons that I can't remember I pulled this board out of my main computer to install a new board, it was working fine then.

I would like very much to install XP Pro, but they say I can only install it on one computer with my upgrade disk.

Anyway, thanks for your input,

Bill Lane

[glc]

He's not running RAID - he's using the HPT370 as a standard ATA100 controller - and with hardware RAID, the OS makes no difference whatsoever, you can even run DOS.

Bill, if I knew exactly where to look in the bios, I'd tell you - I did set up a system a few months ago on a BX133/RAID board, which also uses a HPT. I put the single hard drive on the HPT and it worked fine - but I do remember that you can NOT tell it to boot from ATA100, I *think* I had to tell it HDD 0 but I don't remember exactly. You may have to play around in the HPT bios, that's a separate set of keystrokes to get in there.

[Bill Lane]

Hi glc:

One thing I remember is that when this board was set up and working, I had the hard drives set to ( HDD-0 & HDD-1 ).

I'm glad you cleared that up about using "HPT370" and not "RAID".

I downloaded the manual from Abit in Acrobat format, and took it step by step through the setup, but never got it to boot.

When you say HTP bios, is that the CTRL + H keystrokes you ment? If so, that didn't work for me, I held those keys down while booting, but it didn't do anything.

I'll go back and look at the manual again.

Thanks again,

Bill Lane

[glc]

You don't hold the keys down while booting - you strike them when you see the HPT bios banner on the screen. You should see the HPT bios banner on the screen somewhere during the POST process - if you don't, it's not detecting any drives on the controller for whatever reason - incorrect main bios settings or bad/incorrectly connected cable or bad/misjumpered drive.

[Bill Lane]

Hi glc:

Boy!, you really came through on that CTRL +H operation!!!

I set the hard drive from HDD-0 to PIO-0, and set it to boot from that drive and it went right on into Windows.

You are a winner!!!, that stupid manual wasn't clear about the CTRL+H operation, also that manual in the Acrobat format is so blurry you can't read or see most of the items you want to look at.

Now I remember why I changed this board, it's too much trouble to get set up.

Thanks again,

Bill Lane

[glc]

That must be an ancient hard drive to only want to be seen in PIO - what model is it exactly? Are you using a properly connected 80 wire cable with the drive jumpered to Cable Select?

You have hit upon the exact reason I avoid Abit motherboards and Highpoint controllers - they are very quirky. I prefer Intel and Asus boards and Promise and Adaptec controllers.

[Bill Lane]

Hi glc:

I've installed two WD hard drives, the Master hard drive with the OS on it is a WDCAC22 100H, and the Slave is a WDCAC21 200H, and set to Cable Select.

The cables are 2' round UDMA/133 IDE Cable (Backwards Compatible) standard 40 Pin / 80 Wire, 3 40 Pin connectors, number 20 Pin is blocked.

Yeah, I don't like all this hassle that the Abit board makes you go through, that's why I installed a Pentium board in my main computer.

I'm setting this Abit system up as a back-up computer, and I had the Abit board, so I thought I'd try it again, and if I had it to do again, I'd throw the Abit board in the trash and buy a Pentium. If it gives me any trouble that's what I'll do.

I still have a Promise Controller that I had on another computer, it worked great.

Anyway, I really appreciate all your help, and thanks again,

Bill Lane

P.S. I've got my sound card and modem installed, and no problems so far:-)

[glc]

The 2.1gb should run in DMA (it's an ATA-33 drive), but the 1.2gb won't. Maybe the controller has to see an ATA-66 before it will do it, I dunno.

Have you considered updating your bios? DS is the latest.

http://www.abit-usa.com/downloads/bi...ies=1&model=30

By the way, the BX133/RAID I set up had a 20gb Seagate drive on the HPT and I'm pretty sure I set it to boot to HDD 0. I believe the drive was an ATA66, maybe ATA100.

[Bill Lane]

Hi glc:

I downloaded the bios update and the awdflash.exe, but I think I'll leave things alone for a while, it's working great right now, I'll see what happens when I install IE 5.5 and get all the updates.

Thanks again,

Bill Lane