ASUS P5WD2-E Premium Windows Install Problem (on RAID 0 array)

Hi, I have a system with the ASUS P5WD2-E Premium motherboard and two WD Raptor 150's in RAID 0, both attached to the Intel ICH7R controller. However, even when I use my "F6 disk" to load the RAID drivers, the Windows XP Pro installation always gets hung when it says "Setup is starting Windows". I know it is hung because my numlock key doesn't do anything and CTRL-ALT-DEL does nothing either. I have tried two versions of the Intel RAID drivers now and several different BIOS settings with regard to my hard drives. I've been at this for two days now and am getting very frustrated! I'm using BIOS 0501 with a Presler 930. Does anyone have any ideas on how to get past this hang up?

first of all you need a windows with sp1 and sp2 slip streamed in the disk did set it for raid in bios and set up the intel chip if not read your manaul good luck

SP2 is necessary? The install I've been using only had SP1, I'll give an install with SP2 a try. Also, what do you mean by "set up the intel chip"? Thanks for the advice.

where you inter the ich intel chipset and config the raido chunk size you inter ctrl+i or l to inter it its all in the manual under raido

I am not on my PC right now so I am going from memory. He is speaking about the IDE settings I believe on the first page of the BIOS...the last thing in the list. Set that to SATA/RAID, etc. Then once you reboot it will come up with a black screen with green lettering and there you hit ctrl+l and setup the actual RAID by selecting the proper drives to include in the array, RAID type, etc.

Ah yes, sorry I forgot to mention that I set up both my Raptor 150's in RAID 0 with 64k striping, and these are recognized as a single RAID array in the BIOS. That is all done and should be fine. I've also tried it with just a single drive and no RAID to make sure that wasn't the problem, and came across the same problem.

If you add me to msn Ill go through this with you - I had the same problem but got it working. ([email protected] - ... obviously swap the 0 and the 1 for o and i).

Thanks Ross, I added you so hopefully I'll see you on sometime soon. In the meantime any other ideas are most welcome. Thanks guys.

please rply when you get ut going tycanadian like to know its working ok Rich

Hey guys,

I got it working, thanks for your help. Turns out all I needed was SP2 built into my Windows install CD. SP1 just wouldn't recognize my SATA setup. All is well.

very good let the ocing begain hope you injoy your board as much as i have mine