inaccessible boot device on new w2k installation

[silk1976]

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!

 

[hewissa]

Hmm, interesting indeed. What about re-configuring the drives...not sure how the mobo is setup....is it possible to move 1 drive to your IDE-1 slot and the other 3 to your IDE - 3/4 slot and configure the RAID 5 on those 3. Install the OS on ID-1 Drive and the rest dump on the raid. Might help to weed out boot errors, and the OS needing that driver for the raid, initially.

You said the NTOSKRNL.EXE is where it is supposed to be but maybe it is currupt, did you copy NTOSKRNL.EXE off of the installation CD onto the %systemroot%/system32 directory?

Just a thought....

Your drives may be shot, judging the errors you had at the onset... Hewissa

MCSE, CCNA, CIW

 

[silk1976]

Hewissa -

I disconnected one of the drives from the Promise RAID array and plugged it directly into the motherboard. I ran the W2K setup, and everything worked fine - I could boot into it, the setup proceeded normally, etc.

So it appears as though its something with loading the Promise driver.

The possibility of a corrupt file upon installation has been in the back of my mind. The W2K CD I have can be a little flaky - sometimes during an install it has problems copying a file, then I retry the install and it works fine.
I forgot to mention in my first post that I *think* I not only verified that NTOSKRNL.EXE existed, but I believe I also renamed the original and then copied it from the CD again. Through all the things I tried, I think that step fell through the cracks. I guess I didn't think of it as a big deal because I figured that if it were corrupt, it would say something other then "NTOSKRNL.EXE not found".

So I'll try the installation again with the 4 drive RAID array. If that doesn't work, I'll make a 3 drive array and try to install on the lone drive, but this time it'll be connected to the raid controller instead of the mobo. I'll let you know how it goes.

 

[hewissa]

Please do. Hewissa

MCSE, CCNA, CIW

 

[silk1976]

No luck on reinstalling on the 4-drive RAID 5 array. Same problem - ntoskrnl.exe not found.

So then I tried removing one of the drives from the array, but keeping it connected through the Promise controller as a stand alone drive. No luck there either - couldn't find ntoskrnl.exe.

So it basically comes down to not working through the Promise RAID controller. Which is not good considering that was half the point of getting the RAID controller in the first place!

And seeing how if I plug one of the drives directly into the mobo and it works, then I'm pretty confident that I'm not fighting a problem with the drives anymore, even though I had issues in the beginning with them.

So the next thing I'll try is to move one of the drives and the RAID controller to the KT7 mobo running a Duron 700 MHz, with 128 MB of RAM. That'll at least tell me whether I'm fighting a Promise/Epox compatibility issue or whether I should start contacting Promise to figure out how to make their stuff work

Does anyone know whether XP might be a little nicer to work with in this situation? Just thinking that maybe XP would have an updated driver package during the install that might include the Promise RAID controller.

 

[hewissa]

I had a bad drive on my Promise Raid controller. I could get into windows but everything was slow and the comp continually locked up. I grabbed a tool from Promise (if I remember where it is I will post a link) and it said the Raid was bad....I connected the drive directly to the mobo and 2K said that the drive was bad. I added two new drives to the Raid and it works like a charm. As for the Disk (IBM) I grapped a utility to test the drive and it was shot.

Is there a utility to test the integrity of the drive to determine if the drive is bad or not...given the issues you had at the onset. A faulty drive could blow your Raid. Hewissa

MCSE, CCNA, CIW

 

[silk1976]

Well I think I finally figured it out.

I moved the RAID controller and one Maxtor drive to the Abit KT7 mobo, and reinstalled with it as a single drive RIAD 0. It failed on boot looking for ks.sys

I then swapped the 128 MB SDRAM DIMM on the RAID controller with a 64 MB DIMM. When I booted the machine off the RAID, it apparently found the file and started going into setup.

It then bounced on it's own, and when it came back up, it went into the disk consistency check screen. After that was done, it bounced itself and when it came back up, it got to the keyboard and monitor detection phase and complained that it couldn't find certain installers.

SO I reinstalled (this being hte first time that it was installed with the 64 MB dimm). This time, the 128 MB dimm was in the KT7 mobo and the 64 MB DIMM was in the RAID controller. Everything went perfectly. So I bounced it 3x to make sure and it worked like a champ.

So I put the RAID controller back in the server, configured the 4 drive RAID 5 array and just finished the setup portion. No problems.

It's wierd that the memory stick gives absolutely no problems while being the main system memory, but gave problems being the RAID controller memory. I wonder if the stick is bad, or if it just isn't compatible with the RAID controller.

Anyway, I guess the problem is fixed (knock on wood). Thanks for your help!