KR7A-Raid IDE configuration question

[Shanti]

I just got my KR7A-Raid tonight. It was a replacement for an Epox 8kha+ that I killed. The mobo was the only thing I changed on my system (Win XP Pro, Athlon XP 1700). I tried to set it up with my CD-ROM on IDE1, my CD-RW on IDE2, and my HDD on IDE3 (Raid port). I couldn't get it to work. I would get the Windows XP start screen, then I would get a blue screen that said Windows encountered a problem and was shutting down to avoid damaging my computer. It also said I may have a corrupted drive. If I rebooted from there, I would get the screen that gives you the choice of normal boot, safe mode, etc. No matter what I chose, I would get the same result. Blue screen. The drive was getting detected fine, when I went into the Highpoint BIOS, I can see the drive and I'm able to set it as the boot drive.

I finally gave up and put the HDD on IDE1 and my burner on IDE2. My CD-ROM is not currently connected. Without using the raid ports I had no problems at all getting up and running.

While typing this, it just occured to me that the raid drivers hadn't been installed yet since I couldn't load XP originally. Was this the problem, or should it matter? Does windows need the raid drivers even if I'm just using the raid ports as two more IDE's?

Thanks

[ruri]

My guess is that the WinXP isn't aware of the RAID capability, so try the following to see if it help:

1. Flash the BIOS with the latest release, including the Highpoint BIOS. Couldn't hurt...

2. Go into BIOS at boot and enable the controller. If not enable, the OS won't even see it.

3. When enabled, you should be able to go into the Highpoint BIOS (which is separate from the MB BIOS!) and create your RAID array here. I don't know about your particular MB, but some systems will allow booting from a RAID array, so you might want to set the array as bootable.

4. Reboot once the array is created, then FDISK it to create the necessary partition. Probably need to format it too, YMMV.

5. When installing NT (which XP is based from), you have to add drivers that didn't come with the installation CD. I haven't used XP so this may change a little. When the installation is searching your hardware, press <F6> to get the OS to recognize you, then install the Highpoint drivers. Then, and only then, will the OS know what to do with your built-in RAID controller.

I had the same problem with my old Asus A7V133-RAID and the above procedure allowed me to boot from the Promise controller. Might work on your MB, but YMMV.

Good luck.