[Mr Snrub]

Where did you get that Build? Actual is Build 5456.

It's not a public build.

[Grav!ty]

Where did you get that Build? Actual is Build 5456.

It's not a public build.

You are very fortunate to have access to internal builds Mr Snrub

I think that like 5456 many of them are not "feature complete" so that explains why there are issues.

Bearing in mind that there are daily internal builds and the non-practicality of NVIDIA working on each, it's probably not until we get the next RC that we will really see if there is any improvement in this RAID issue.

[Kobazz]

thats a shame.. 5456 has got a lot better then beta2

[JabbaPapa]

5456 is better for some, worse for others --- for use in a general evaluation environment however, where stability and reliability are important, I (personally) would certainly recommend the Beta 2 over the 5456

[Grav!ty]

After the issues I had installing Vista to RAID on my Biostar system, the dealers here in cold and wet Cape Town emailed Biostar in Taiwan and this morning I got a brand new shiney, written for me, BIOS update from Biostar

I am so impressed I can hardly believe this and full kudos to Biostar for the effort they went to. Effectively what they did is to disable PATA RAID support in the BIOS (which I believe is what has caused many folks a problem with getting Vista installed on SATA RAID with the NF4 southbridge and RAID Controller).

So far I have installed Windows XP Pro X64 (which I was unable to do previously no matter which drivers I tried) and am in process of installing Vista Beta 2 on the RAID0 array using the NVIDIA Beta 2 Drivers. The RAID array was recognized, drivers installed using the RAID Driver CD and right now file copy is at 75 % and counting, usually a sign that all is well when file copy can start.

I don't want to push my luck which is why I am starting with Beta 2 and once that is successful, I will give 5456 X64 a try

Beta 2 X86 Installed perfectly on the RAID0 array, now on to 5456 X64

[Grav!ty]

5456 X64 installed perfectly to RAID0 here is a pic showing the RAID drive and the controllers in Device Manager and Windows Explorer showing the X86 Program folder



BUT and a huge BUT

On restart it BSOD's and goes into the reboot loop that everyone has been experiencing

[Pyr0]

hehe, well...
i managed to install Vista64 build 5456 onto a RAID array the other day hehehe

the method isn't exactly perfect and the controller shows as "unknown device" but it works and boots from a raid array

the first thing i had to do was install 5456 on a single drive and get it to recognise a separate raid (i'll call this vista1)

the install went fine, but seeing the raid array was a different story.
even tho i wasn't booting from the array, it still installed those (stupid) 5456.5 raid drivers (and saw 2 disk drives, one of which was not initialised) and wouldn't allow me to install my own

i uninstalled the nvidia raid controller from device manager, disabled system restore and proceded to delete all traces of nvraid (.sys, .pnf, .inf)
tried installing the xp64 drivers again - error
but this time the error told me that it was because a driver/service was already in use (or something like that)
opened the registry, browsed to

Code: Select all

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Services

and removed the nvraid service

rebooted again and installed the xp64 drivers without a hitch, one final reboot and Hooray, Vista sees my raid array

then to install vista on raid (vista2)....
i started the setup from within XP64, already on the raid array...
each time the setup rebooted, i switched boot drives to the single sata disk drive containing vista1 and booted into that instead

in vista1 i searched the copied/extracted install files for nvraid and removed all 5456 versions
i also had to take ownership of the new vista2 windows folder to have permission to delete some files in there

it took a little longer than a normal install
but eventually when vista had finished setting up, there were no 5456 drivers installed and rebooting is no problem


sorry for the slightly jumbled explanation, i hope it makes sense to somebody

[Grav!ty]

Wow Pyr0 but that takes some determination. Very well done, so you were 100% right about those 5456.5 raid drivers. This gives me hope for the next build then

[Pyr0]

Wow Pyr0 but that takes some determination. Very well done, so you were 100% right about those 5456.5 raid drivers. This gives me hope for the next build then

heehee, yeah this is what happens when i get bored

now if only i could figure out a way to strip those non-working 5456 drivers from the actual install dvd
things would be a lot quicker

i couldn't believe it when they didn't even "see" a spare raid array

[Grav!ty]

I've given up on 5456 X64 and have now added my third baby raptor to the array and created 4 equal partitions of 26 GB each.

I've started to install in this order:

XP Pro X64
Beta 2 X64
5456 X86 (no problems with this on my ASUS rig so that should be good)

I'll keep the 4th partition clean for now in case......