Help! - A8V XP Installed Now will not load windows

bklynzfinest · 04-01-2005, 10:11 AM

I built a system utilizing the A8V with a Seagate SATA drive attached to the Promise controllers. The IDE drivers were installed during XP setup and everything was working fine for about 4 months.

Yesterday I turned on my machine and when it got to the Promise BIOS post message it failed to recognize the hard drive and indicated ARRAY not defined.

I know XP is on the hard drive. Anyone have any suggestions how to reinstall the Promise 378 ATA driver since it appears it was somehow corrupted? I'd hate to lose everything on the hard drive and reinstall XP all over again.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks.

**clintfan** · 04-03-2005, 11:11 PM

Hi bklynzfinest , and welcome to the forum!

Quote:

The IDE drivers were installed during XP setup and everything was working fine for about 4 months. Yesterday...it failed to recognize the hard drive and indicated ARRAY not defined.

Better check your BIOS Advanced- Onboard Devices Configuration- Onboard Promise Controller Operating Mode. It sounds like it might have become switched to RAID mode, because you said it is complaining no "ARRAY" was found. But since you say you installed the ATA driver, that implies the chip used to be in IDE mode, or else the driver would not have installed. In IDE mode there will be no message that uses the term "ARRAY".

This make me think your BIOS has switched to the wrong mode. If what you said about the ATA driver is true and your BIOS has it in RAID mode, then the fix should be simple: switch back to IDE Mode.

If the Promise BIOS mode changed, and it happened during poweroff, I think the old ATA driver should still be there. If it happened while powered up, Windows could have "discovered" new hardware and installed the Promise RAID driver... but I think that's unlikely since if that happened, your machine probably would have crashed right then and there.

I don't know what would make the setting change, but one idea is that your CMOS battery may be starting to grow weak. If you find RAID mode in the BIOS and this all makes sense, it might be worth installing a fresh battery, then Load Setup Defaults, then reapply all your custom BIOS settings.

BTW I don't think there's any way to run your SATA O/S drive on the VIA SATA1-2 ports. Unless I'm mistaken, those ports run in RAID mode only. So you do need to get those Promise SATA ports working again.

Hope this helps,

-clintfan

bklynzfinest · 04-04-2005, 01:40 PM

Thanks clintfan.

You were right. I realized on the way home that it most likely had switched to RAID mode and when I switched it to IDE everything went smoothly.

I will take into account your suggestion with the battery since it flipped to RAID on its own.

Thanks Again.

04-01-2005, 10:11 AM	#1 (permalink)
bklynzfinest Registered User Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 2 OS: XP	Help! - A8V XP Installed Now will not load windows I built a system utilizing the A8V with a Seagate SATA drive attached to the Promise controllers. The IDE drivers were installed during XP setup and everything was working fine for about 4 months. Yesterday I turned on my machine and when it got to the Promise BIOS post message it failed to recognize the hard drive and indicated ARRAY not defined. I know XP is on the hard drive. Anyone have any suggestions how to reinstall the Promise 378 ATA driver since it appears it was somehow corrupted? I'd hate to lose everything on the hard drive and reinstall XP all over again. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

04-04-2005, 01:40 PM	#3 (permalink)
bklynzfinest Registered User Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 2 OS: XP	Thanks Thanks clintfan. You were right. I realized on the way home that it most likely had switched to RAID mode and when I switched it to IDE everything went smoothly. I will take into account your suggestion with the battery since it flipped to RAID on its own. Thanks Again.