Abit Bl7-raid

**Fraser** · April 6th, 2007, 07:05 AM

I've upgraded the BIOS to the BP one from the companies site. I'm not sure if it supports drives over 137GB. I really need to know about that. I tried to install the new motherboard but it didn't fully boot W2000 SP4. I had a quite badly messed on drive and now I've 2 volumes I can't get mounted. My OS volume backup had to be used and a lot of fixing of the other volumes with CHKDSK. I tried booting with a Promise IDE card but that was worse than the motherboard controller.

**NooNoo** · April 6th, 2007, 11:10 AM

So what is the first problem? Does it actually start to load windows?

**Fraser** · April 7th, 2007, 05:50 AM

It crashes with a blue screen during the screen with the progress bar. With the Promise controller it is sooner and a different blue screen mesage. I've made a temporary system to test my Windows volume with on a 30GB drive which should not cause any size barrier problems.

The board is not listed here:
http://www.abit-usa.com/faq/mb/check137gb.php
It doesn't look like the BIOS is compatible with >137GB drives.

**Fraser** · April 7th, 2007, 07:32 AM

It still doesn't work. The blue screen of death says Inacessible boot device. It comes during the coloured startup screen with the progress bar.

**Fraser** · April 7th, 2007, 08:00 AM

I'm going to try solution 2 here:
http://www.motherboard.windowsreinst...m/problems.htm

**NooNoo** · April 7th, 2007, 09:16 AM

Change the ide cable and if that doesn't work, try the drive on the secondary ide port. Make sure you have the correct jumper settings, they vary between hard disks.

**Fraser** · April 7th, 2007, 03:37 PM

The solution of changing to the vanilla driver worked. Now the keyboard doesn't work at the login screen. Probably the motherboard chipset drivers aren't installed. I'm trying to get around the problem with a USB keyboard.

**NooNoo** · April 8th, 2007, 04:31 AM

A ps2 keyboard is a core device and can be controlled by bios... nothing to do with chipset drivers as such... but 2k had this problem on some machines for some reason... never did track down what the problem was, but a repair install nearly always fixed it.

Edit, just found this might help if there was a usb keyboard used during install... or it might fix it anyway!

**Fraser** · April 8th, 2007, 08:08 AM

I've not had any USB keyboards working. That registry
value is 1.

**Fraser** · April 8th, 2007, 08:52 AM

Do you think a USB keyboard might work? Would a USB card be any different to the motherboard USB sockets? I can have a card installed that the OS has drivers for.

I might get a cheap rubber keyboard for my testing setup.

**NooNoo** · April 8th, 2007, 05:13 PM

Try it...

**Fraser** · April 14th, 2007, 01:40 PM

It hasn't worked.

Since it can be installed for some earlier chipsets I might get a 810 chipset board, boot on that, install the chipset drivers from Intel, then change to my new Abit board. Will a 810 chipset board be likely to work with W2000 without installing the chipset drivers? It came out before W2000 I think. Or would I have another board I can't fully boot on?

**NooNoo** · April 17th, 2007, 06:04 AM

Changing the board means a repair install of 2k. The 2k disk is sp4 slipstreamed?

**Fraser** · April 17th, 2007, 12:59 PM

I've finally got the INF files extracted from this:
************************************************** *******
* Product: Intel(R) Chipset Software Installation Utility
* Release: Production Version
* Version: 6.3.0.1007
* Target Chipset#: Intel(R) E8500
* Date: November 24, 2004
************************************************** *******

I used Setup -A -P "C:\INF files"

The drivers seemed to install as well.

**Fraser** · April 22nd, 2007, 08:01 AM

I have it working now. I was trying to copy the drive to another drive with PM and then test it all but that made it freeze during the loading of personal settings. It worked when I tried my main drive.

It was necessary to set the drive controller to the standard one. Also I had to install the chipset drivers with the method above. One problem remains that some of my memory modules don't work on it. It does not seem to get any correct information from the SPD chip, even the size. Another module from the same manufacturer works ok.