New pc, Struggling to install windows.

I cant press f6, it doesnt do anything, the hdd's are Sata, i meant to say that i dont own a sata cd drive.

Again, pressing F6 does not let me do anything, i'm sure i've said this already.

Its the same problem if the hard drives are setup as a raid or as individual drives.

If you press F6 normally it will load the first section of files from the disk before asking you to enter your disk but it does not load these files.


-Edit- Memory problems have been fixed, bios is currently running 1306.

I am starting to think that the XP install for some reason will not start to load the files because of the hard drives, however i've not figured out a way to move around this.

Again it only displays the option to press f6 (which i've done) and it has not promted me for a disk, it has done nothing. I'm not talking about the last part of windows disk install where it copies the files to your hard drive before reboot, but when it checks the install CD for the files and loads the files windows needs before copying at the very very very start of the install process.

 

OK, can you elaborate on this. Not trying to put words in your mouth, I read this as you press F6 at the prompt, files continue to be copied from the CD and you get an F8 prompt which you press and things still continue until you get to the screen that asks you to press S for additional manufacturer's drivers, you press S, insert your driver floppy (please confirm) and then nothing happens and you can go no further. Is this the situation? If no, please walk us through with some detail.

 

No thats not whats happening, i'd have less of a headache if it was

The f6 thing is kind of a keyframe in the whole situation. Just there to be used as a point of referance. The bit after that message appears does not happen.

From booting the machine up this is what happens.

Bios checks blah blah blah (everything ok)

Nvraid check (228gb strip OK)

<Setup is inspecting your computers current hardware configuration>

<blue screen with grey bar along the bottom> (windows disk setup screen)

It then displays this along the bottom grey bar.

Press F6 to install 3rd party etc

Press F2 to run ASR (automated system recovery)

<at this point the bar goes blank> (the actual problem i'm having)


During the last part, in my many hundreds of previous windows installations, it cycles through a list of files before entering into the part where you are able to use your disk for 3rd party drivers and then the F8 part after a few more files. At no point does it cycle through the list of files no matter what HDD / CD setup i try.

This is my problem, i can see from my previous posts why it may seem like the F6 part was the problem but i always intended to use that as a point of refeance rather than the issue its self.

 

OK - glad to learn you've done "many hundreds" of installations - that confirms just what we are working with.

A few comments here:

Although a letter was left off, it appears you are trying to setup a Striped RAID. Understanding that you are fully aware of the consequences of this, I should withold comment but that would be a disservice to you and any other readers. A simple Striped RAID 0 is a recipe for disaster because if either drive ever goes south, all of your data on both drives will be unretrievable. Since one gains about a 3% disk performance boost at best, most would agree that this is unadviseable at best, ignorant at worst. Having said that, I will not question this further.

Would you please list your current BIOS settings for each of the following:
NVRAID configuration
Boot Device Priority
Hard Drive Settings

 

Dezzy, Dezzy, Dezzy

If you have installed hundreds then I have installed thousands.

Get us the info Rockster requested.

BUT!!!!!!!!!!

If you have SATA PLEASE PLEASE humor us. Download the SATA drive disk as in my last post. Hit F6 to install. Pretty please. You are not getting anywhere your way are you?

The files on the disk will be those listed below

Si3132r5.sys
SilSupp.cpl
SIPPD.inf
SiWinAcc.sys
TxtSetup.oem
si3132r5.cat
SI3132r5.inf

So how bout try some of what we say instead of just repeating over and over how many installs you have done and how you don't need to F6.

Mike

EDIT PS: You should listen to Rockster about the Raid. I agree 100%.

 

Bios:

Main > IDE Configuration

SATA1 and STAT2 [Enabled]
SATA3 and SATA4 [Enabled]

nVidia RAID Function [Enabled]
SATA1 [Enabled]
SATA2 [Enabled]
SATA3 [Disabled]
SATA4 [Disabled]

Boot > Boot device priority

1st Boot Device [Nvidia Stripe 228.]
2nd Boot Device [CDROM M-PLEXTOR C]
3rd Boot Device [1st FLOPPY DRIVE]


Not sure what you mean about hard drive settings and theres nothing more to be said for nvraid settings that i'm aware of at least.


mflynn humour me and read what i've written in previous posts. it does nothing. I've said this numerous times. Again just to clear it up, IT DOES NOTHING, NADA, NO RESPONCE, DIDDLY SQUAT. I hope that stops the F6 mumbo jumbo.

The raid makes no difference too me, any files i want to keep are stored on another hard drive. This drive is just for gaming / a bit of video editing here and there, its nothing special so i'm not bothered about the raid setup.

 

Geeze

D*m you are hard headed.

You have never said you have downloaded the driver.

Of course it won't work unless the floppy is in the drive when you hit F6!!!!!!!

Sure it just goes on by if you don't hit F6 with the disk in the drive.

And of course it will stop if you hit F6 and the disk is NOT there.

What harm can it do!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My last post here. I shouldn't be here anyway

Mike

 

Sorry, dont mean to seem hard headed just getting furstrated with the machine, i have tried with the disk in + out when i press f6, thanks for pointing me to the driver site but thats for a slightly different sata port on the mobo, its the nvraid drivers i need (and have used)

 

One more time.

Are you telling me you downloaded the floppy disk creator that I pointed you to.

The disk it is referring to is not the CD Disk. This has to be a floppy!

Ran it and created a "FLOPPY" had the disk in the drive and hit F6 quickly (not much time allowed).

Unless this Motherboard has been modified these are the correct drivers.

Again I say. Humor us DO IT!

Mike

 

Yes i've downloaded + run it (onto a floppy) and used it on my pc, still no luck

 

OK Finally you made that clear! Unless you still don't believe us and are just "Humoring" us.

Now do away with all RAID (turn them off/disable) and try a conventional install with only the SATA drives.

You can RAID later.

Mike

 

Tried that already, did not work, tried with only one drive one memory stick etc plugged in, no other pci card besides the gfx card. I'm going nuts now ^_^

Have tried 3 seperate Sata hard drives (the two i have on raid individually, and another storage disk i have) Currently i only have the raid disks attached.

-Edit- Just tried again, destroyed the raid, turned off the nvraid, even reduced it to one disk again after it not working with two. Tried 3-4 resets now with different config things.

One thing i did notice in the HDD info, should 32bit transfer be disabled? I've never come across this option in a bios before.

 

Sorry I missed all the action - but since I'm not sure just what has or has not been done (referencing comments on ASUS thread about some BIOS tweaking and disabling etc), I'd like you to reset CMOS but we are going to do this the right way. Please forget about any instruction you have gotten previously.

Turn off your machine. Disconnect the main power cord from your machine. Disconnect the ATX power header from the motherboard. Locate your CMOS jumper and remove it from pins 1&2, place it on pins 2&3, wait 20 seconds, re-jumper 1&2. Reconnect the ATX power header to your Motherboard. Plug the AC power cord back into your machine. Boot up while tapping Del key and go directly into your BIOS upon startup.

Set your date and time and use setup defaults then make the necessary changes to include PCI-E video, SIL & NVidia controllers, on board sound, both your Marvel and your NVidia Lan, your boot order as Removable followed by CDROM followed by HDD followed by nothing (assuming you have 4). Then go back and set NVRAID configuration, Boot Device Priority and Hard Drive Settings to reflect that you want to boot to your first SATA HDD which will be listed as Drive 0 right now (assumes just two drives on the NVidia controller and no other HDD's anywhere). Do not monkey around with a bunch of other settings as it appears from comments in your ASUS forum that the BIOS is not real familiar turf for you. Leave the ACPI settings alone too - make no changes to the power settings. Please confirm when done and then we will go through building the proper utility disks for use. Despite what you may have been led to believe, there are several drivers that will eventually be necessary that are not on your slipstreamed disc at this time and that disc itself is also suspect. Your comment on the ASUS board re: finding a web site download for XP itself indicates a general lack of familiarity with this. Please understand, I'm not trying to dis you - its just that the way this whole thread has developed along with reading your posts at ASUS means that "between the lines" reading is required to get to the facts and respond accordingly.

 

Also just noticed from The ASUS Site:

Are you using a USB Keyboard by chance?

 

No i'm not using a usb keyboard, i've got a PS2 keyboard especially for this. (but have tried both of them, just to be sure)

The XP download thing was because none of my friends have a copy of XP pro, and i needed to get hold of another copy to test with. And this bios is something i've not tried before, the most advanced bios i've used is an epox bios thats about 5 years old.

will go through the instructions you've left asap. will let you know if it helps.

 

Slow Down - don't do anything beyond that yet.

Now, get out your motherboard CD and using another machine, navigate to NForce4 > Drivers > Chipset > Make Disk > XP_32 > PATA RAID > MakeDisk.exe

Put a blank formatted floppy in your 3.5" bay and double click MakeDisk.exe

Repeat the same step all the way through to XP_32 > SATA RAID > MakeDisk.exe

Put a blank formatted floppy in your 3.5" bay and double click MakeDisk.exe

Now, Navigate to the folder for your SIL Controller and locate MakeDisk.exe

Put a blank formatted floppy in your 3.5" bay and double click MakeDisk.exe

You now have 3 floppies and even though you are not going to need all of these drivers at this hot second, we are going to load them all.

Confirm when you're done and we'll go to the next step.

 

next part is a bit tougher, i've got a machine with no floppy drive that has a cd drive and a laptop with no cd drive (which i'm using at the moment) which has a floppy. Going to have to copy the contents of the cd across the network, should be back soonish.


This is folder structure i have on my mobo disk;

NForce4 > Drivers > Chipset > Make Disk > XP_2k

It ends there with the MakeDisk Application and a bunch of config settings with a folder called "lang files "

 

Use your ASUS A8N to do this and just startup with ASUS Motherboard CD in that Plextor - you can work from there as it will boot to the CD itself. Don't try to do this across the network.



edit: You'll see a different menu for building the necessary disks doing it this way but you should be able to get it done if you follow ASUS's instruction. Remember - three disks.

 

re: not seeing all files - set your machine to shown hidden and system files.
You'll find this under folder options.



also, did you open that folder? Open it.
You may also want to enable file extensions - same place as above to enable that.