Booting without CD in Windows XP- Pro RAID System

Thanks, but that does not help. In order to boot at all, my first boot device must be CDROM and my second the Harddrive. Otherwise I get either of the two errors.

It won't boot from the SATA RAID, install XP to the master
IDE (ATA 100 drive) as C:, set that to be your boot device.

During install from the XP CD, you select to install to the
0 IDE ATA100 drive and make that the C: drive.


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"Jim" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:50AAC42E-A2AE-44D2-8D87-90B0D71237F7@microsoft.com...
| Thanks, but that does not help. In order to boot at all,
my first boot device must be CDROM and my second the
Harddrive. Otherwise I get either of the two errors.

"Jim" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote...

> Thanks, but that does not help. In order to boot at all, my first boot

device must be CDROM and my second the Harddrive. Otherwise I get either of
the two errors.

Try disconnecting the ATA drives, then set the boot sequence to SATA then CD
then ATA.

If it gives you a "can't find the OS" message, wipe the OS files from the
SATA drives, boot from the CD, and install the OS on the SATA drives.
Reconnect the ATA drives when done.

SATA support and configuration should be
available at http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/

I think your installation is misconfigured, you should have
C: as one of your IDE hard drives , the other D:, and the
RAID array should be E: or F:

Does the Gigabyte mobo manual or website have any
configuration FAQs?

Are you prepared to wipe your installation and start over if
necessary?


--
The people think the Constitution protects their rights;
But government sees it as an obstacle to be overcome.


Jim" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:FDC62CFE-9090-4257-BAF4-CF043EBACA21@microsoft.com...
| I built a system using a Gigabyte Motherboard with the
Intel 875 chip set. I recently upgraded from Win 2000 Pro
to Win XP Pro. The system has an 3GHz P4, 1 Gbyte of PC3200
ECC memory and two ATA 100 Harddrives. I also added two
Seagate SATA hardrives and set them up as a RAID 0 Array.
The system is fast and fairly stable. However, it will only
boot if I leave a bootable CD in one of my CD drives.
Windows XP calls my C drive [the RAID array] the boot drive,
and my E drive [ATA 100] the system drive. If I leave the
bootable CD out, I either get an error saying NTLDR is
missing, or an error saying HAL.DLL is missing. Which error
I recieve is dependant on whether I choose to boot from the
E disk or C disk in the bios. I have not been able to
recieve support from Gigabyte and of course Microsoft does
not support Win XP Pro OEM.

I do know that WinXP must install a few files, such as NTLDR on the IDE master drive. WinXP, Gigabyte and Intel all seem to state that the boot drive containing Windows and all programs can be on the SATA array. Oddly, if I copy the WinXP CD files to the raid array and attempt to repair the installation, Windows repair will boot from the raid array without the CD present, but then it cannot find the Windows installation. If one cannot load programs from the RAID array, RAID arrays are useless. Data files are much smaller than any modern program. Futher, no one would put their data on a RAID 0 array. I would think Microsoft would mention such a hugh "feature." What I cannot figure out is why having a bootable CD in a drive makes the boot work. I do not boot from the CD, the bios just needs to recognize that it is there. To me, this points to an error in boot.ini or one of the associated files.

Jim asked

> I built a system using a Gigabyte Motherboard with the Intel 875 chip set.

I recently upgraded from Win 2000 Pro to >Win XP Pro. The system has an
3GHz P4, 1 Gbyte of PC3200 ECC memory and two ATA 100 Harddrives. I also

>added two Seagate SATA hardrives and set them up as a RAID 0 Array. The

system is fast and fairly stable. However, >it will only boot if I leave a
bootable CD in one of my CD drives. Windows XP calls my C drive [the RAID
array] the >boot drive, and my E drive [ATA 100] the system drive. If I
leave the bootable CD out, I either get an error saying >NTLDR is missing,
or an error saying HAL.DLL is missing. Which error I recieve is dependant
on whether I choose to >boot from the E disk or C disk in the bios. I have
not been able to recieve support from Gigabyte and of course >Microsoft does
not support Win XP Pro OEM.

>

Hi Jim

You have said that you are not to be able to set the SATA array as the
primary boot device.

That would indicate that the Gigabyte implementation of SATA through their
BIOS prohibits such a configuration and that the SATA connections are only
to used for storage.

In order to check this we need to know which mainboard model as well as
manufacturer (in your case Gigabyte) you are using.

It's worth pointing out that such situations do occur. If this is the case
then it is entirely a decision by Gigabyte to restrict the SATA usage to
this and nothing to do with Microsoft.

Hope that helps
Pete

The Motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-8IK1100 Rev 1 which includes the Intel 875P chipset with SATA RAID 0/1 support. I am using bios version 10.

"Jim" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote...

> The Motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-8IK1100 Rev 1 which includes the Intel

875P chipset with SATA RAID 0/1 support. I am using bios version 10.

Is the SATA array configured and the SATA drivers available on floppy to
transfer to the SATA drives during OS installation?