XP Pro setup error for SATA RAID

[A_Fungus]

new setup of xp pro. System: P4 2.8c on MSI PT880 board
with 514 DDR400 3200 Ram. MSI 8X AGP 5700 Nivida card.
two Seagate 160 SATAs set in RAID 0. Bios is set for
SATA. Windows XP does not see the drive and with the 3rd
party drivers are requested from floppy, they appear to
load, then the system halts with error message: "File
\Sata\winxp\Viasraid.sys caused an unexpected error (18)
at line 2108 in d:xpspl\base\bcot\setup\oemdisk.c.

 

[Bob Harris]

A couple of thoughts: (1) check the motherboard support site for newer
drivers and/or a newer BIOS. (2) Verify that the RAID array has been
prperly configured. You should see somehting towards the end of the BIOS
checks about the RAID controller and how the disk(s) are configured. (3)
Try viewing the disks with the Seagate disk preparation tools CD. Do
something simple like their 30 seocnd quick disk check. If the Seatools can
not see the disk, the something is wrong with the connections, RAID, or the
disks themselves.

Another thought, without an obvious solution: XP can not handle disks
larger than 137Gig or so, unless SP-1 is installed and 48-bit LBA is
enabled. Usually trying to install XP on a larger disk results in only
seeing the first 137Gig, then one can install SP-1 and enable 48-buit LBA to
see the rest, but I am not sure if that is universally true. A related
thought is that you might ant to use the Seatools to partition the disks, so
that the largest partition is significantly less than 137 Gig.

Try checking the Seagate website for info on installing XP on their disks.

Finally, I should mention that have used the Seagate 120 Gig SATA disks for
over a year (on n ASUS P4S8X motherboard) and they are superb. So, once you
get things wrking, I predict that you will be very happy with their
performance.

 

[A_Fungus]

Thanks for the ideas.. Tried them all. XP Pro version I'm
trying to install has service pack one... I'm running
Seagate SATA'S on three other systems, The 2 80 gig. No
complaints either. (both on ASUS boards too) and one
Maxtor SATA 120 in a Shuttle box with a Spacewalker
Board... I think I'll have to flash the bios again.. Raid
is on Via chipset. My others are on Promise and SiS...
This is the only one I'm having grief with.