hello everyone, been reading up on different posts here hoping to find an answer to a very nasty problem ive been having for 3 weeks now... anyways....this is the situation....P3-450MHz on a MSI mobo.(MS-6156BX), 196MB(PC100),asus agp vid, 3 x 18,4gig Atlas III 10rpm, adaptec AAA-133U2 RAID controller and onboard sound...for over 3 weeks now ive been attempting to get a clean load of win2000 on it. .. whats happening is that for whatever reason somewhere midway through the installation everything halts..let me try to explain in details whats going on: At the moment ive have configured a RAID 5 on RAID channel 3 and ive a plextor bootable cd-rom at RAID channel 2 for a bootable installation from cd-rom. the system starts pretty good everything is detected correct ..ram, cpu, RAID controller, cd-rom, disk drives and so on... after the detection of all the 3 disk drives and the cd-rom the installation of win200 proffesional initiates. I press F6 during the start of the installation so I can add my mass storage device driver (AAA-133U2 controller), I go through the process of installing the driver (I got the updated version from adaptecs website) with no problem at all. The installation continues a few minuttes and then..everything halts..In the lower left corner of the blue installation screen there is a text saying "Setup is starting Windows 2000" ?? at this point the cd-rom spins down and halt approx. 1 min starts spinning again and then stops completely ??...when I use the word setup above I am not sure if is is the correct word..I mean it seems like I only reach to the hardware detection level - I never reach so far that I get any windows dialog boxes...at the moment I am mostly worried about the installation in terms of the SCSI setup which I think is done completely after the book..I am using LVD cabling with a terminator in the end (I am carring all 3 disks on one LVD cable, the one that was included in the retail box from adaptec), the cd-rom is terminated on its own 50pin SCSI cable also from the retail box), the controller is having SCSI id 7 on all channels, the 3 disks in the array having id 0,1 and 2 (ive tried changing id but the manual prescribes id 0 and up).. moreover Ive exhausted all other options in terms of hardware errors as far as swapping out vid.card. & memory., disabling all kinds of things within the mobo. BIOS and the RAID controller BIOS., upgrading the mobo. BIOS. upgrading the RAID card BIOS., changing RAID channels between channel 1, 2 & 3., changing arrays (ive tried RAID 5 and RAID 0)., ive put in an ide disk drive and installed win 2000 prof. with no problems (so the cpu, motherboard, ram is working perfect in this environment), ive scanned the disk drives for bad sectors..but with no results, low level formated the array..as mentioned before the SCSI BIOS, jumpers on the disk drives is done in line with the AAA-133U2 manual. Most of the jumpers are not active - only the jumpers affecting the SCSI id, termination power set on the last disk in the chain and a jumper called ds is set on all disks. Concerning the mobo. it has to be PCI rev. 2.1 and it got to support busmastering (that should be ok I guess..how should I be able to make an array then..). I am not so much aware about how to check memory settings and irq settings if this could be the problem ?...im at the end here and really hoping someone can help me out :confused: ..... thanks in advance to all u pc gurus out there.

Try loading without hitting f6 to install the drivers.

Windows 2000 has built in support for Adaptec and it will load the scsi drivers for your controller.

I've never had to load any scsi drivers for any controller that I've used.

I got some advices from another forum as well as the one from you - thanks Bob. Take a look a my progress so far:

 

Mitch advice:

 

If you are not doing it currently, can you try to use an IDE CDROM for your installation? That for me on my all SCSI system does the trick.

__________________

Win2k: Athlon 2000XP+, 10k RPM U160 SCSI RAID 0 with 16MB cache, 512MB RAM.. And for what? Word processing, email, and HoH baby!

 

First of all thanx for your advice - something is happening now ! but..

 

First ive tried to complete the installation without the F6 procedure and using the 4 floppy disks instead of the SCSI bootable CD-ROM..and something happened..the first break through ive seen for 3 weeks. It is the first time in my life I happy to see a windows stop error .. .:

 

*** STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF5C63848, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000) INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE

 

If this is the first time you´ve seen this stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps:

 

Check for viruses on your computer. Remove any newly installed hard drives or hard drive controllers. Check your hard drive to make sure it is proberly configured and terminated. Run CHKDSK /F to check for hard drive corruption, and then restart your computer.

 

Refer to your Getting Started manual for more information on troubleshooting Stop errors.

 

Well after this error I completely disconnects the SCSI CD-ROM and connects my IDE CD-ROM. I tried once more the installation and again a new windows error came up.. ..:

 

Windows 2000 Professional setup

-----------------------------------------

-----------------------------------------

 

Setup cannot find CD-ROM drive.

 

Make sure your CD-ROM drive is on and properly connected

to your computer. If it is a SCSI CD-ROM drive, make sure your

SCSI devices are properly terminated. See your computer or

SCSI adapter documentation for more information.

 

Setup cannot continue. To quit Setup, press F3

 

Mhh, I then checked everything and decided to setup the CD-ROM as a primary master device on the IDE contr..my first setup was based on the secondary slave mode...again I went through the installation and end up with this error message.. ..:

 

Windows 2000 Professional Setup

--------------------------------

--------------------------------

 

Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer.

 

Make sure any hard disk drives are powered on and properly connected

to your computer, and that any disk related hardware configuration is

correct. This may involve running a manufacture-supplied diagnostic

or setup program.

 

Setup cannot continue. To quit Setup, press F3.

 

And here I am ?? ..pretty spooky in my opinion..what the hell is going is basicly my honest opinion ! Pls. comment, advice would be great right now.

 

//I attached a doc. ive found on MSwebsite knowledgebase. Iwent through the document but could not really figure it out, I would be happy if anyone would assist me on this doc ?

 

Best regards, Thomas, Copenhagen --> Denmark

 

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Mhh, I then checked everything and decided to setup the CD-ROM as a primary master device on the IDE contr..my first setup was based on the secondary slave mode...again I went through the installation and end up with this error message.. ..:

 

Windows 2000 Professional Setup

--------------------------------

--------------------------------

 

Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer.

 

Make sure any hard disk drives are powered on and properly connected

to your computer, and that any disk related hardware configuration is

correct. This may involve running a manufacture-supplied diagnostic

or setup program.

 

Setup cannot continue. To quit Setup, press F3.

 

And here I am ?? ..pretty spooky in my opinion..what the hell is going is basicly my honest opinion ! Pls. comment, advice would be great right now.

 

//I attached a doc. ive found on MSwebsite knowledgebase. Iwent through the document but could not really figure it out, I would be happy if anyone would assist me on this doc ?

 

Best regards, Thomas, Copenhagen --> Denmark

 

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Mitch wrote again:

 

This is where I think you are on the right track....

 

Run setup as your primary master on your IDE port. Make sure to press F6 or F8, the option to install a mass storage controller.

 

Normally the error you got is from the improper installation or lack of a mass storage controller. You may want to make sure that the win2k RAID card drivers are on the root of the floppy and not within a folder.

 

You almost got it, you just need to poke around a little more.

__________________

Win2k: Athlon 2000XP+, 10k RPM U160 SCSI RAID 0 with 16MB cache, 512MB RAM.. And for what? Word processing, email, and HoH baby!

 

 

Mitch808, Ive tried a few things, among them your suggestion.

(Ive doubled checked the floppy disk - all the files stays in the root)

The first thing I did was to set the system up with an IDE cd-rom primary channel master. Then during the installation I used F6 and installed the manufacture driver this way. Unfortunately, everything halts the same way ive tried from the very beginning of this adventure. Then ive tried again - same procedure - but without using the manufature disk (adaptec driver). This time I came a bit further. Ive ended up with the error message telling me that win2000 cannot see any disk drives (the message which I had from yesterday)

At the moment, right now my time, I am trying out a RAID 0 on channel 1 consisting of 2 disks - my third drive is disconnected. I am verifying the drives right now just to be sure everything is ok. Further more I try - again - to swap the RAID card between the 3 available PCI slots. I think it is worth trying again now that I know the IDE CD-ROM solution works. The experiment failed once again .. with the "setup did not find any hard disks drives installed in your computer" I wonder what the message "..and that any disk-related hardware configuration is correct" means ?

 

By the way, I wonder if there could be something wrong with the RAID card - I mean everything works well without the RAID card ? Does any of you guys know how to find out it it could be a non-functional RAID card that I got ?

 

Moreover, I have some questions regarding the jumpers on the disk drives:

 

Below is the list of jumpers available,

 

DS - Delay Spin

NW - No Wide

SCSI ID

SE - Force Single Ended Operation

SS - Stagger Spin

TE - Termination Enable

TP - Termination Power

WP - Write Protection

 

I have set the SCSI ID to 0 and 1. Termination Power is set on the last disk in my chain. Delay Spin is set on all disk drives (should be set if there is multiple disk drives that have to start at power on..according to Maxtor/Quantum sources..I guess an array is the definition of multiple drives..). Pls. comment

 

Regards Thomas

 

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What do you think about this Bob ? :rolleyes:

Ok. Make sure your bios is set to boot from the scsi drives. Also there should be an option in the bios that will enable the box to boot from scsi cards. Check for enable interger_19 interupt or something like it. It should be in advanced option under devices. Enable that option. Set the boot options for scsi after cdrom and once you load the drivers you should be good to go.

If the above option isn't enabled when the OS scans the bus for boot devices it won't see the controller.

Thx. for all your help on this thread BOB.

 

I can tell you that the whole case ended up with me getting a completely new card from Adaptec ! :D

I contacted Adaptec's support - that is based in Germany - and after I explained the problems I had at that time refering (of course) to the threads at this website among others, then the supporter gave up and ordered a new card ! Victory at last. Thanks, I mean if I did'nt had the knowledge from the many good advices I got from this forum then I am sure that I would have been giving up the project.

 

Best regards, Thomas

Thanks for the update. Glad you got everything worked out.