installing a new XP issues

[illusha]

ok, so i have this IBM Netfinity rackmount server. I got rid of all of the SCSI stuff and now run a few IDE drives from a Silicon Image UltraATA-133 PCI card... i've been trying to install XP_Pro on one of the drives, but so far - unsuccessfully...

so i boot the 6 floppies, press F6 and load the driver for the PCI card, it reads the CD, goes through the format screen (where i select - keep the existing files), gets to the "system will restart in 15 seconds" screen, restarts, goes through normal BIOS, and then sits there blinking an underscore on a black screen instead of starting to load files from the CD...

i tried having only 1 single drive connected to channel_0 on the PCI card, i tried moving the card to different PCI slots, i tried re-plugging all the cables... same result... WTF?????

 

[bcastner]

If you do a format as part of install, the drivers that you loaded from F6 are lost. After all, the drive is reformatted.

I agree this is not particularly clear.

Do the format, then exit install.
Restart install, do the F6 again, and install on the now avaiable hard disk.

 

[illusha]

cant format the drive cuz it has 230GB of files that i need...

must install the system together with those files...

(drives are formated in NTSC, not FAT)

besides, formatting a HD won't erase the drivers loaded into memory, i've done it a-many times

 

[bcastner]

...besides, formatting a HD won't erase the drivers loaded into memory, i've done it a-many times."

Well, I disagree with you, and Microsoft disagrees with you:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314859

We were discussing I thought a clean install situation. In this circumstance you are dead flat wrong in your notion of the persistence of the drivers loaded at F6.

 

[bcastner]

You might consider doing all the original disk prep with the preinstallation environment. The version with the largest driver set for hard drives that I know of is the Ultimate Windows PE Boot CD. This is a variant of the original Bart's PE work:

http://www.ubcd4win.com/

Then all you need to do is present again the floppy set of drivers at F6 for an intallation (without partitioning or formatting required).

 

[illusha]

OK, you win thanx for the correction - good article!!!

like i said, though, i'm not really performing a format of the drive, instead i select "keep the existing files"...

i wonder if the Driver i am installing needs an updated version of Firmware/BIOS on the card - i havent updated those in a while... but, i'd think they all should be backwards compatible...

 

[illusha]

i will check out UBCD, as of now i know nothing on how it works

but it seems interesting, thanx for the suggestion

 

[bcastner]

I believe the issue is using the floppy setup method. There essentially is nothing close to a matching driver. This requires "patching" the floppy setup:

If you require an updated OEM driver to support an existing controller that is natively supported by Windows but is not detected during setup, you must replace the Windows driver for the controller with the new OEM driver. You can find the Windows driver for the controller on one of the six Windows Setup boot disks or in the temporary installation folder ($WIN_NT$.~BT). This replacement allows Windows to use the updated OEM driver during text-mode setup, but you must copy the same updated OEM driver to the System32\Drivers folder of the final Windows installation before the installation continues into graphics-mode setup.

Let me translate this a bit. You need to patch the floppy driver set. Then, prior to having XP install enter the GUI portion of the setup you need to stop the process. This is were the PE CD can help, as it will let you access NTFS partitions and copy the driver set manually to the drive.

There is a workaround suggested in the MS KB: format a 2-4gb FAT32 partition, install XP, and convert the partition size and filestore type afterwards.

Tell us a little more. Do you have access to a bootable CD drive on this box?

If your intention is not to do a clean install, but a repair/reinstall of XP on the drive I am not sure this is possible with the setup diskette approach. There just are not enough files there to permit a floppy-based reinstall.

 

[illusha]

here's more:

its an IBM Netfinity rackmounted server with dual 933 processors and a Gig of RAM...

it has 2 internal SCSI slots on mobo that i do NOT use... it also used to have a ServeRAID SCSI PCI card that was a pain in the ass to configure and re-configure all the time... I USED to have an XP on a SCSI drive, and then two 250GB IDE drives on the UATA-133 card for storage...

NOW i got rid of all of the SCSI crap, and want to install a fresh copy of XP onto an IDE drive that already contains 230Gb of files - audio/video but never had a system on it...

i have a Silicon Image SiI0680 PCI card...
i found some downloads for it here:

http://www.siliconimage.com/support/downloadresults.aspx?pid=31&bios=0&drivers=0&sataraid=0&

it is not normally supported by Win...
there's no SI drivers on the 6 floppies - nothing to patch...
i have to use the F6 method...

 

[illusha]

btw, yes there is a cd drive, but i always had to use the 6 floppies before the XP_Pro CD-ROM... otherwise it doesnt read the CD