C
C.S.T
Due to a failing drive or 2, I decided it's finally time for a reinstall. I
decided and planned everything out, with an add on PCI raid card, copied the
drivers and inf to a usb key drive, powered everything down, tossed in my
Vista Ultimate DVD, and decided that vista would run nicely on a nice striped
set of sata II 250 gb drives all by itself. The install itself went
flawless. I installed the drivers, it took them without any problems,
partitioned the array how i wanted it (400 GB for the OS, remainder for
backup incase i needed to restore it in case of emergency), and everything
went outstanding. (And I must say fast!)
Thats when the nightmare started. After I made sure that the system was
usable, I took my failing 250 GB hdd and disconnected the sata cable, and
suddenly, I get an error, that theres no valid boot device found (aka : NON
system disk, insert system disk and hit enter).
I tinkered with the boot order repeatedly, and even set the raid 0 array i
built as the only bootable device, and still got the error. Then it dawned
on me what most likely happened. I reconnected my failing maxtor, booted the
system, and went to the boot menu for the hdd order, booted to that drive,
and there were wonderfully ... 2 entries for Windows Vista !
Now, normally, I know what I should do, is take said key drive with those
drivers, boot to the DVD, go to repair, and try to have it fix the boot
issue, so thats what i did. I removed ALL other hdd's from the system,
except those two on that card. Boot to the dvd, go to repair, when it gives
me an option to load drivers, i do so, and select the inf thats on the key
drive. And I get a HUGE LIST of the same devices... all of the instances
have the same name and such... with no discernable differences what so ever.
I had rebooted trying to load each one of them off of that single inf, and
every single one of them fails with the same error simply stating that
"Unable to load driver."
The driver functions fine for the actual install of vista, and its operation
as well. Booting from the failing maxtor, and selecting the appropriate
install of vista, it boots to the raid array just fine.
The card is just a cheap Silicon Image 3114 SataRaid (FakeRAID) pretty much,
and the drivers are the latest from the manufacturer's website as well. Any
ideas on how to proceed ? I didn't even bother with activation, because I am
pretty much figuring I will need to just do a reinstall from scratch (again)
Thanks in advance for any help offered.
decided and planned everything out, with an add on PCI raid card, copied the
drivers and inf to a usb key drive, powered everything down, tossed in my
Vista Ultimate DVD, and decided that vista would run nicely on a nice striped
set of sata II 250 gb drives all by itself. The install itself went
flawless. I installed the drivers, it took them without any problems,
partitioned the array how i wanted it (400 GB for the OS, remainder for
backup incase i needed to restore it in case of emergency), and everything
went outstanding. (And I must say fast!)
Thats when the nightmare started. After I made sure that the system was
usable, I took my failing 250 GB hdd and disconnected the sata cable, and
suddenly, I get an error, that theres no valid boot device found (aka : NON
system disk, insert system disk and hit enter).
I tinkered with the boot order repeatedly, and even set the raid 0 array i
built as the only bootable device, and still got the error. Then it dawned
on me what most likely happened. I reconnected my failing maxtor, booted the
system, and went to the boot menu for the hdd order, booted to that drive,
and there were wonderfully ... 2 entries for Windows Vista !
Now, normally, I know what I should do, is take said key drive with those
drivers, boot to the DVD, go to repair, and try to have it fix the boot
issue, so thats what i did. I removed ALL other hdd's from the system,
except those two on that card. Boot to the dvd, go to repair, when it gives
me an option to load drivers, i do so, and select the inf thats on the key
drive. And I get a HUGE LIST of the same devices... all of the instances
have the same name and such... with no discernable differences what so ever.
I had rebooted trying to load each one of them off of that single inf, and
every single one of them fails with the same error simply stating that
"Unable to load driver."
The driver functions fine for the actual install of vista, and its operation
as well. Booting from the failing maxtor, and selecting the appropriate
install of vista, it boots to the raid array just fine.
The card is just a cheap Silicon Image 3114 SataRaid (FakeRAID) pretty much,
and the drivers are the latest from the manufacturer's website as well. Any
ideas on how to proceed ? I didn't even bother with activation, because I am
pretty much figuring I will need to just do a reinstall from scratch (again)
Thanks in advance for any help offered.