Problems with Vista

[ljCharlie]

I installed the beta of Windows Vista and now my RAID drive is gone. Vista does not see my SoundBlaster Audigy card, Viewsonic monitor, NiC, and so on. What's going on? Any idea how to resolve this?

[Ob1]

thats the problem with beta editions, buggy for one, and two drivers might not be written for all hardware devices yet, check the hardware vendors to see if you can find vista drivers.

[ljCharlie]

I don't think beta is the problem. I just downloaded 30 day trial RTM version and I still get the same issue.

[EzyStvy]

Are you booting off the raid?
Is there another OS installed?
Did you do the F6 option and pop in the floppy with the raid drivers?

[ljCharlie]

Thanks for the response. Here's what I did. This computer has Windows XP Pro in it. I installed Vista by rebooting the PC and using the Vista DVD to install when the PC is rebooting. Vista did not ask for anything regarding the RAID drive. Vista saw the IDE drive which is the "C" drive and I choose to install it on that drive. No, I did not use the F6 to popup for the floppy. I never had to that with windows xp pro.

[EzyStvy]

So, besides C drive you have two more drives setup in a Raid? You probably need to installed the drivers for the Raid Controller.

[Panama Red]

Let's see if I understand this correctly. You have two hard drives in your pc configured as Raid running XP. You decided to try Vista so you rebooted the pc, and booted to the Vista DVD. The pc loaded Vista with no additional promping and now the XP Raid configuration is corrupted.

I suspect Vista didn't recognize the Raid, saw your Master hard drive and installed itself on that drive creating a new C: drive. This would effectively destroy the XP install (assuming Raid 0) and make all data unrecoverable. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

[ljCharlie]

Okay, assuming I have to install the RAID drivers for Vista to recognize my other drives. What about my NIC, SoundBlaster sound card, ATI video card, and ViewSonic monitor? I tried to install the drivers and Vista kept saying there is no such hardware for the drivers. Why? It's in there.

[MaxRat]

windows update will get them...

To do raid on Vista...

Set up raid thru XP (with the XP disk) then when set up recognises raid on the re-boot (where is goes to load the OS) switch to the Vista dvd....poof..you got raid...

no problem...

[ljCharlie]

Windows update won't work because, again, the NIC is not recognized.

[MaxRat]

go to the nic makers site and load a vista driver....

OR try running the xp driver...on the install file...right click it and under compatability...check XP...then install it...

[ljCharlie]

Many thanks for the responses. This is only for testing that's why I use an old Dell PC. And yes, I'm pretty sure that once it is released I hope it will not have these kind of problems.

Now, back to the issue. I re-install Vista and load the RAID drivers in fine. I now see my other RAID drives. As for my other hardware, well, I found out that, at least in my case, supporting for old hardware is much worst than Windows XP. Vista will not allow me to install any driver that is not Vista compatible or signed. I finally downloaded a beta driver from SoundBlaster and now my sound card does work. Here is the error mesage when I tried to install an old driver that works perfectly fine under Windows XP Pro.

Setup could not detect any Sound Blaster Audigy 2 on your system.

However, as I mentioned above when I install the new Vista comptible driver from Sound Blaster it works fine. Vista's error message makes it sounds like there is not such hardware in my computer. So in my case, the conclusion is that unless you're planning to buy all new hardware, Vista RTM is pretty much useless with old hardware that works very well under Windows XP Pro. Unless other people in here find a tweak somewhere that I'm not aware of.

[ljCharlie]

Originally Posted by MaxRat go to the nic makers site and load a vista driver.... OR try running the xp driver...on the install file...right click it and under compatability...check XP...then install it...

Good tip. I'll give it a try and see what happens.

Thanks so much.

[ljCharlie]

Okay, I tried that option but unfortunately it doesn't work. Vista will come back and said, "The best driver software for the device is already installed" and it would not go further. Any other ideas?

[kev7555]

How old is this Dell we're talking about and what are all of the system specs?

Vista is very picky about hardware, ya know...


-Kev

[ljCharlie]

I wonder why it works fine under XP Pro. Here are the specs:


System Type: Dimension 4500
Ship Date: 9/24/2002
Dell IBU: Americas

Quantity Parts # Part Description

1 4P615 ASSEMBLY, CARD (CIRCUIT), PLANAR (MOTHERBOARD), DIM4500, AUDIO

1 9K792 PROCESSOR, 80532, 2.4G, 512K, 533FSB, SOCKET N

1 7N242 KEYBOARD, 104, UNITED STATES, SILITEK, LOW COST, MIDNIGHT GRAY

1 6U220 KIT, MOUSE, PERSONAL SYSTEM 2, S69, LOGITECH

1 8N275 COMPACT DISK DRIVE, 128K, I, 5.25" FORM FACTOR, 48X, LENGTH/LONG, 8481B, CHASSIS 2001

1 9K099 CARD (CIRCUIT), GRAPHICS, 32MB, ATI TECHNOLOGIES INC, FULL HEIGHT, SECOND

1 7T281 FLOPPY DRIVE, 1.44M, 3.5" FORM FACTOR, 3MD, NO BEZEL, TEAC, V4, CHASSIS 2001

1 1T320 HARD DRIVE, 20G, I, 3.5" FORM FACTOR, 1N, 7.2K, WD-XL40S

1 6K223 KIT, SOFTWARE, WKS-STE2K2, 5.25" FORM FACTOR, ORIGINAL EQUIPMENT MFGR., ENGLAND/ENGLISH

1 3U669 KIT, SOFTWARE, OVERPACK, WINDOWS XP HOME, COMPACT DISKETTE W/DOCUMENTATION, ENGLAND/ENGLISH, A03

1 7C712 CARD (CIRCUIT), NETWORK, ETHERNET, 10/100, CNET TECHNOLOGY INC, REVISION

1 1K696 DUAL IN-LINE MEMORY MODULE, 512, 266M, 64X64, 8K, 184

[Ob1]

you could always try putting a different nic card into the system

[ljCharlie]

Okay, I finally managed to get all my hardware recognized with drivers that worked on XP. The problem now is everytime when I reboot the PC, the refresh rate will default back to Vista's default refresh rate and not the refresh rate that I specified in the video card's driver. Any idea how the resolution and refresh rate to stay in Vista?