W2K Service pack conflict with RAID Card?

[Count_Alucard 0]

Hi, I have a computer with the following components:

-Asus P4B533 mainboard with 768 megs of DDR 2100 RAM

-MSI 8851 GeForce 3 Ti 200 with 128 megs of memory(Latest Drivers installed)

-Intel P4 2.0Ghz CPU

-Promise Ultra ATA/100 controller card

-Promise FastTrak 100 TX2 RAID Card

-2 Western Digital 100 GB HDDs with 8mb Cache on the RAID card in a mirrored setup

-Linksys NIC

-Plextor PlexCombo DVD/CD-RW Drive

-LS 120 Drive on Promise Ultra ATA/100 controller card

-Iomega Zip 250 Drive on Promise Ultra ATA/100 controller card

On this computer I’m running Windows 2000 without any Service Packs installed. I decided to add SP3. I installed the Service Pack & rebooted as instructed. Everything proceeded properly until the boot process reached the "Starting Windows" screen where you can push F8 for other starting options. The computer hung at that point & the boot process proceeded no further. Fortunately for me I use GoBack. I just reverted the hard drive back to before the Service Pack installation. Of course, W2K booted up properly after the GoBack revert. I then tried SP2. The same thing happened, so I used GoBack to revert again. W2K booted up properly once again. I went to Microsoft’s site & tried to get some info from the KB, but nothing seemed to come up that applied to this situation. I suspect that the problem is with the RAID setup. But I don’t know for sure. I’m guessing that if I break the RAID array & attached the HDD to an IDE connector and then applied the Service Pack that it might not hang on me on the reboot. At this point I need some help from you experts. I’d rather not break the RAID array until I know that attaching the HDD to the IDE connector is the way to fix my problem. I sincerely thank all of you who may contribute to helping me fix this problem.

[Christianb 8]

I'm almost certian that you installed windows 2000 with the promise controller and the array no? If you break the array your system won't boot either. Stupid microsoft did a pitiful job of supporting IDE controllers in 2000. If you want to change IDE controllers Win2K doesn't just detect the changes and let you live your life, no it will keep looking for the old controller and continually fail to boot. There's a KB article on this, I think it contains "after upgrading to a new motherboard [a new IDE controller as well] the system no longer boots". However you could just take my word for it or you can look for it at MSKB. I think your best option is to read Promise's website and if you can't find any SP3 info call them. By the way I had a promise raid controller and after having tons of stability problems, and being required to re-install windows (per the issue I just described), I tried to return what was in my eyes a defective product. Promise refused to refund my purchase (much to my personal dissatisfaction) so I sold the hunk of junk on eBay. I took a loss both in selling price and countless hours of wasted time. I think raid is a great idea. However I haven't seen one good implimentation yet. If the OS knows about the raid controller I'm already disinterested. Raid also violate KISS : Keep it Simple Stupid .

 

Christian

[adamvjackson 0]

Yes, unless it has been updated via a hotfix, the SP3 version of the scsiport.sys file is incompatible with promise ide controllers. Try searching the forums, as this was discussed in great legnth in another thread. If you need the SP2 version of the scsiport.sys file, you can just send me an email and I will get it to you asap.

[Four and Twenty 0]

Quote:

I'm almost certian that you installed windows 2000 with the promise controller and the array no? If you break the array your system won't boot either. Stupid microsoft did a pitiful job of supporting IDE controllers in 2000. If you want to change IDE controllers Win2K doesn't just detect the changes and let you live your life, no it will keep looking for the old controller and continually fail to boot. There's a KB article on this, I think it contains "after upgrading to a new motherboard [a new IDE controller as well] the system no longer boots". However you could just take my word for it or you can look for it at MSKB. I think your best option is to read Promise's website and if you can't find any SP3 info call them. By the way I had a promise raid controller and after having tons of stability problems, and being required to re-install windows (per the issue I just described), I tried to return what was in my eyes a defective product. Promise refused to refund my purchase (much to my personal dissatisfaction) so I sold the hunk of junk on eBay. I took a loss both in selling price and countless hours of wasted time. I think raid is a great idea. However I haven't seen one good implimentation yet. If the OS knows about the raid controller I'm already disinterested. Raid also violate KISS : Keep it Simple Stupid .

Christian

dude raid is simple
a simple way to speed up the slowest part of the system
and simple way to ensure higher data security

raid is the bomb
you like watching movies
try capturing and editing without raid

I currently have 2 raid arrays in my system and i will definatly have more soon that is my next upgrade.

also scsi is the stuff to go for
find it used like i did and you will get the most bang for the buck
scsi supports 15 devices perchannel so it is alot mor expandable than ide
like for instance i have 6 IDE ports which means i can hook up 12 ide devices max. I have 2 scsi ports which means i can hook up 30 scsi devices.

I don't know where i was going with that litlw rant other than raid is good and buy stuff used.

[Count_Alucard 0]

Well I got this problem solved. After spending 4 hours on the phone with Microsoft

Tech Support, the fix involved me manually overwriting the new system files (Ntldr

& NTdetect.com) that SP3 put in to the Root Folder. I used versions of Ntldr & NTdetect.com

that were proven to be able to start the computer. After this manual overwrite the computer quite hanging during the boot & is running fine now. Is there a way to get prevent the Windows Update icon from showing up in the system tray--courtesy of SP3 I suppose.

[Christianb 8]

Hi yes your windows update problem can be disabled. Just go to windowsupdate.com and there should be a setting for it in there somewhere.

[Christianb 8]

Thanks amigo I am aware of SCSI and it's design superiority and the fact that windows internally uses SCSI for it's data access and that IDE drives are mapped to the SCSI based data access.

 

I was a hardware tester at Microsoft. I just value stability more than performance, I haven't always, but I think I've learned my lesson over the years.

 

I don't mind that you like it. I don't think RAID sucks by any means, I'm simply stating that I have yet to see a good implimentation. The data shouldn't enter the OS directly from a RAID controller rather. The drives should be plugged into the raid expansion card and then there should be plugs to plug your emulated single drive into the motherboard's ide controller. I know might sound crazy, but who really cares about speed. Compatiblity is where it's at. Who cares how fast your PC is when you can't run anything?

 

If someone would make the design I just described users wouldn't have to partition, format, re-install, re-configure, and re-load data files just to have raid. If my design was followed you could just copy from the single (non raid) drive to your array and the OS wouldn't be any wiser.