Vista won't startup unless I hit F8 at post and select raid array.

[Guest]

Installed an additional 2 gigs of memory (originally 2 gigs of same DDR2 800)
and found Vista to be VERY slow to start up. Installed update KB929777 as
memory over 3 gigs can cause problems with Vista per Microsoft.com. Didn't
help. Right after this I could get Vista to the sign on screen, but then it
would do nothing after signing on. Only a black screen. Still could move
mouse pointer, but nothing else happened. Pulled new memory, leaving
original 2 gigs, and now PC can't find find bootdisk at startup. I've reset
the bios to default with no luck and enabled raid. Still can't find
bootdisk. I popped in the Vista DVD and selected system restore to go back
10 days. Still no bootdisk found. Now it does work when I hit F8 at post
and select my striped raid array. Vista starts up just fine then. Once this
is done there seems to be no performance problems, so I don't think its a
hardware problem (even ran memory test off Vista DVD and memory tested fine),
but I'm not sure. Any ideas what is causing this and how to fix it? Thanks!

 

[Guest]

Hi srfisch1,

When you next boot up your PC, enter your BIOS. Does it show the correct
time and date? If not then the battery that maintains your BIOS settings
(including those for RAID) might need replacing. These are usually button
cells type CR2032, but check your motherboard's manual first.
Dwarf

 

[Guest]

Thanks for response. Figured it out. Somehow the bios had selected my
external drive as the bootdisk. I simply changed it to my raid array and it
boots fine now.