I'm in the process of upgrading my server, and I seem to be having problems every step of the way. Here is the hardware I'm using:
Epox 8RDA+ mobo
512 MB DDR RAM
Athlon XP 2100+ proc (Thoroughbred-B core)
4x 40GB Maxtor HD's (6E040L0)
Promise FastTrak SX4000 IDE Raid controller
GeForce2 MX video
My first problem was that all drives had about 18 MB of bad sectors out of the box, and when W2K setup tried to format the drives, it errored out and rebooted. I ran the Maxtor Powermax utility and performed a low level format on all the drives, which seems to get rid of the errors. I'm not incredibly happy about having to do that with new hardware, but I just figured sometimes those are the breaks. BTW - I had incompatibility issues with the powermax utility and the Epox mobo - I couldn't see the drives. Once I put the drives into another box with an Abit KT-7 mobo, powermax worked fine. (just an FYI for anyone using maxtor drives and the Epox board).
Anyhow, so now I had freshly low-level formatted drives, I configured the drives as a RAID-5 array in the Promise BIOS, and it saw all the drives fine. I started W2K setup, pressed F6 to load other drivers, and everything seemed to be running smoothly. W2K setup could see the 120 GB partition, and I broke the 120 GB partition into a 30 GB partition to install the OS on, and a 90 GB partition for everything else. I had the setup process format the partition with NTFS, and it started copying everything over, no problems. It then said it needed to reboot.
After the machine POSTs, it came back saying it cannot find 'ntoskrnl.exe'. I loaded up W2k Setup in repair console mode and verified that ntoskrnl.exe does in fact exist. So then I modified the boot.ini file to include the /bootlog and /sos switches so I could see the boot process and see if the fastsx.sys driver was being loaded (fastsx.sys is the driver for the promise RAID, and I thought maybe it couldn't find ntoskrnl.exe because the raid driver wasn't loading). I booted up the machine, I could see fastsx.sys loading, and oddly enough, even though I only changed logging parameters in the boot.ini file, it starts booting into windows 2000. Wierd.
The next screen that came up was the one with the "Windows 2000" banner on the top, the progress meter on the bottom with the blue square indicators, and the middle of the screen is black. It displayed that it was loading windows 2000, and showed the amount of RAM on the machine. At that point, it paused for about 10 seconds and then came up with the "inaccessible boot device" BSOD.
So does anyone have any idea why it would seemingly half start loading, and then suddenly complain that it can't find the boot device? I'm still suspicious of the loading of the RAID driver, but all indications are that it's ok, since I can see fastsx.sys being loaded during the initial OS boot.
Which brings me to another question - where is that fastsx.sys driver kept? I mean - the system can't read from the hard drives on the RAID controller until it loads the RAID controller driver, and so the RAID controller driver must be kept somewhere else other then on the hard drives! In these sort of setups, would the drivers be written to memory on the RAID controller?
But the question of where the drivers are loaded is secondary - I'm mostly trying to see if anyone has any idea what might be causing the inaccessible boot device.
FYI - I've looked at the boot order in the mobo BIOS. It's set to "1) Floppy 2) CD-Rom 3) Other". I've also tried "1) Floppy 2) CD-Rom 3) SCSI" with the same inaccessible boot device results where it seemingly half loads, and then quits.
Any help would be appreciated - thanks in advance!
Epox 8RDA+ mobo
512 MB DDR RAM
Athlon XP 2100+ proc (Thoroughbred-B core)
4x 40GB Maxtor HD's (6E040L0)
Promise FastTrak SX4000 IDE Raid controller
GeForce2 MX video
My first problem was that all drives had about 18 MB of bad sectors out of the box, and when W2K setup tried to format the drives, it errored out and rebooted. I ran the Maxtor Powermax utility and performed a low level format on all the drives, which seems to get rid of the errors. I'm not incredibly happy about having to do that with new hardware, but I just figured sometimes those are the breaks. BTW - I had incompatibility issues with the powermax utility and the Epox mobo - I couldn't see the drives. Once I put the drives into another box with an Abit KT-7 mobo, powermax worked fine. (just an FYI for anyone using maxtor drives and the Epox board).
Anyhow, so now I had freshly low-level formatted drives, I configured the drives as a RAID-5 array in the Promise BIOS, and it saw all the drives fine. I started W2K setup, pressed F6 to load other drivers, and everything seemed to be running smoothly. W2K setup could see the 120 GB partition, and I broke the 120 GB partition into a 30 GB partition to install the OS on, and a 90 GB partition for everything else. I had the setup process format the partition with NTFS, and it started copying everything over, no problems. It then said it needed to reboot.
After the machine POSTs, it came back saying it cannot find 'ntoskrnl.exe'. I loaded up W2k Setup in repair console mode and verified that ntoskrnl.exe does in fact exist. So then I modified the boot.ini file to include the /bootlog and /sos switches so I could see the boot process and see if the fastsx.sys driver was being loaded (fastsx.sys is the driver for the promise RAID, and I thought maybe it couldn't find ntoskrnl.exe because the raid driver wasn't loading). I booted up the machine, I could see fastsx.sys loading, and oddly enough, even though I only changed logging parameters in the boot.ini file, it starts booting into windows 2000. Wierd.
The next screen that came up was the one with the "Windows 2000" banner on the top, the progress meter on the bottom with the blue square indicators, and the middle of the screen is black. It displayed that it was loading windows 2000, and showed the amount of RAM on the machine. At that point, it paused for about 10 seconds and then came up with the "inaccessible boot device" BSOD.
So does anyone have any idea why it would seemingly half start loading, and then suddenly complain that it can't find the boot device? I'm still suspicious of the loading of the RAID driver, but all indications are that it's ok, since I can see fastsx.sys being loaded during the initial OS boot.
Which brings me to another question - where is that fastsx.sys driver kept? I mean - the system can't read from the hard drives on the RAID controller until it loads the RAID controller driver, and so the RAID controller driver must be kept somewhere else other then on the hard drives! In these sort of setups, would the drivers be written to memory on the RAID controller?
But the question of where the drivers are loaded is secondary - I'm mostly trying to see if anyone has any idea what might be causing the inaccessible boot device.
FYI - I've looked at the boot order in the mobo BIOS. It's set to "1) Floppy 2) CD-Rom 3) Other". I've also tried "1) Floppy 2) CD-Rom 3) SCSI" with the same inaccessible boot device results where it seemingly half loads, and then quits.
Any help would be appreciated - thanks in advance!