0x0000007B with Adaptec AAR-1430SA

[NFI]

Hello,

I'm trying to install Server 2003 Enterprise Edition onto a system using a mirrored pair of Seagate 160GB drives through an Adaptec AAR-1430SA controller and I just keep getting a 0x0000007B error, which I've found means INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE.

The only troubleshooting I've found vaguely relating to this is for installing Server 2000 onto a mirrored volume created under Server 2000 itself - the solution, apparently, is to get rid of the mirrored volume and install to a single drive.

Before I try converting my mirror back to JBOD and attempting to install again, does anybody have any ideas as to how I can get around this?

Thanks,

Paul

 

[itsp1965]

Usually a 7B error is caused by;

- An incorrect driver
- A corrupted driver
- A boot sector virus

When the 2003 installation starts press F6 immediately so you will be prompted to install a 3rd party driver. It is quite possible the driver you are using is not the right one for your installation

 

[NFI]

Hiya,

thanks for that - I've tried using the drivers that came with the card and I've just made sure that Windows isn't trying to sneak it's own drivers in instead, but I get the same error I tried downloading updated drivers from Adaptec, but they seem to be corrupt! I get some sort of script error with them...

As my drives are new out of the box, I'm fairly sure there's no boot-sector virus, but is there an easy way to check?


Thanks,

Paul

 

[NFI]

Hello,

well, I "figured it out" and got it working...for anybody who might have the same problem in the future, here's what was wrong;

The optical drive I was using was a new SATA DVD+-RW drive; I've never installed one of these before and, whilst the Server 2003 CD will happily boot from it, it seems to get confused once the blue-screen install stage gets to "Starting Windows". I changed the SATA drive for a PATA drive and the problem went away. As SATA Optical Drives are bound to become more common, this may be one people start to encounter more frequently...

Interestingly, I was also using a USB FDD for my RAID drivers and, whilst the initial stage of the blue-screen install happily recognised the drive and read the drivers, when the install then looks for them again afterwards, it refused to see the USB FDD, so I had to hack a standard FDD into my system as well...this is probably more my hardware than Windows, though...

Anyway, it's now happily installing to my mirrored pair, so all's right with the world as far as I'm concerned...until the next thing goes wrong

Thanks,

Paul