RAID controllers on IC7-max3

iv been having what i thought to be alot of software problems with my pc since i built it, service pack 2 screwed it up everytime i installed it, but i stopped trying to install it and everything ran fine for a while.
for no apparent reason windows wouldnt boot occasionally, so i would go into safe mode and delete any recent installed programs and it would start to boot again for a while. until this stopped working.

Now i have just formatted and fresh installed only the very basics ie; windows,drivers,firewall+AV,AOL, a couple of essential OC tools and of course HL2 and steam. but i'v found that a couple of programs arent working, Windows Media being one and Abit EQ another. both give the error message of "internal application error",,,,,,,,,after a fresh install???

I now have the suspition that it might be the intel raid controller loosing data cos i remember before i built the pc someone saying something that the silicon image chip was much better.

am i completely out on this? or has anyone had problems with the intel raid chip?

please help, i cant bear the suspense when i turn my rig on anymore and iv memorised the crap that microsoft tells you when your installing xp

i havent had any problems with it

Normally the OnChip ICH5R controller is preferred over the onboard Sil controller, because most believe the ICH5R is the faster controller. The one advantage the Sil controller has over the ICH5R is that the Sil isn't affected as much by an out of spec PCI bus speed. The ICH5R controller is very sensitive to a PCI bus anything over the rated 33.3MHz, so check to make sure the 'AGP Ratio (CPU:AGPCI)' is set to FIXED, and 'Fixed AGP/PCI Frequency' is set to 66/33 in the BIOS. If it's not actually locked, then as soon as you start increasing the FSB the AGP/PCI bus speeds will in turn increase exponentially.

Make sure that when arriving at the F6 screen during the initial part of XP Setup, you load the Floppy Configuration Utility drivers from floppy. In addition, make sure to install the latest INF Update Utility and the Intel Application Accelerator (RAID version), all available from Intel here ..

Intel® Chipset Software Installation Utility
http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scr...XP+Professional&lang=eng&strOSs=44&submit=Go!

Intel® Application Accelerator RAID Edition
http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scr...XP+Professional&lang=eng&strOSs=44&submit=Go!

Floppy Configuration Utility - Intel® Matrix Storage
http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scr...&OSFullName=Windows* XP Professional&lang=eng

...all the above are for XP Pro.