Windows 2000 issue on Highpoint 370 RAID controller

[Indy Tech]

Cross posting to 3 groups. If there's a better suited group for this
question, please tell point me to it.

Ok, here's the problem I created today...

I am working on a system with an Epox 8K5A2+ motherboard with the Highpoint
370 RAID controller. This box is not currently using RAID, and contains 3
IDE drives. One is set up as the Primary Master on the first RAID
controller, the second drive is Secondary Master on the RAID controller, and
the third drive is Primary Master on the standard IDE controller. The OS is
Windows 2000 Professional.

Norton Disk Doctor today asked if I wanted to correct a problem with a
non-bootable partition, and without thinking much I clicked Yes. (doh!) The
box then rebooted and couldn't find a boot drive. After much screwing
around, I booted off a DOS disk and checked with Fdisk. Both the original
boot disk on the first Highpoint RAID slot and the disk on the primary IDE
slot have their partitions marked Active. Apparently the box can't decide
which disk to use and when it reaches the point of polling the drives to
search for a boot record, it just stops and sits there.

If I disconnect the IDE drive, the system boots fine off the drive on the
first Highpoint slot. Reconnect the IDE drive, boot hangs forever.

I have gone into the HPT370 BIOS to make sure the first drive is identified
as the Boot drive.

Lil help? Any relevant input is appreciated.

 

[Bjorn Landemoo]

Indy Tech

I wonder what Norton Disk Doctor did... Operation successful but the
patient died...

What happens - or should happen - when you boot is that BIOS decides what
controller is the first one, either the Highpoint or your IDE controller.
This is normally configurable from your System BIOS.

Next step during boot is to find the first hard disk on this controller,
then reading the partition table to find the first primary active
partition.

It seems to me that your problem lies in the first step. Do you see
anything on the screen when boot hangs?

I don't know anything about Norton Disk Doctor, but can it change the boot
order of your controllers? Check System BIOS and see if this reveals
anything.

The fact that you have active partitions on more than one disk should not
be a problem, as selection of controller comes first.

Best regards

Bjorn

 

[Leonard Severt [MSFT]]

Cross posting to 3 groups. If there's a better suited group for this
question, please tell point me to it.

Ok, here's the problem I created today...

I am working on a system with an Epox 8K5A2+ motherboard with the
Highpoint 370 RAID controller. This box is not currently using RAID,
and contains 3 IDE drives. One is set up as the Primary Master on the
first RAID controller, the second drive is Secondary Master on the
RAID controller, and the third drive is Primary Master on the standard
IDE controller. The OS is Windows 2000 Professional.

Norton Disk Doctor today asked if I wanted to correct a problem with a
non-bootable partition, and without thinking much I clicked Yes.
(doh!) The box then rebooted and couldn't find a boot drive. After
much screwing around, I booted off a DOS disk and checked with Fdisk.
Both the original boot disk on the first Highpoint RAID slot and the
disk on the primary IDE slot have their partitions marked Active.
Apparently the box can't decide which disk to use and when it reaches
the point of polling the drives to search for a boot record, it just
stops and sits there.

If I disconnect the IDE drive, the system boots fine off the drive on
the first Highpoint slot. Reconnect the IDE drive, boot hangs forever.

I have gone into the HPT370 BIOS to make sure the first drive is
identified as the Boot drive.

Lil help? Any relevant input is appreciated.

This doesn't have anything to do with multiple partitions on different
drives marked active. You can have the primary partion on all drives
marked active and the system will still boot fine. The boot drive is
determined by the CMOS settings or controller settings. I have used this
before to switch among different OS's on different drives. What is going
on is the system is trying to boot from the IDE drive and can't. You
need to go into the normal CMOS settings and make certin it is not set
to boot from the stardard IDE at all.

Leonard Severt

Microsoft Enterprise Support

 

[Carroll]

Check your Boot.ini file... It should look like the following for your
first drive.

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000
Professional" /fastdetect

--


Regards,

Carroll