Kt7a Raid + win2k

_CreeD_

Hi folks,

I spent 14 hours, and a couple of 100 megs of downloading drivers/patches yesterday for nought. Win2k installed fine, at first glance, but would freeze whenever direct3d/opengl was activated. I couldn't resolve it and ripped the damn thing back off, but am willing to give it one last shot if one of you bright lads can tell me the error of my ways. Some more detail:


INstalled:
Sp1 (Not wasting 100mb downloading 2 if its a waste of time).
Reg fix for agp crashes in Win2k.
Geforce2 Pro Drivers 11.01, 12.90. 14.20.
DirectX 8a.
Sblive original and Liveware3 drivers (sound crackled regardless).

Tried:
Different AGP Aparture settings.
Setting resources manually in the BIOS (Ignored by ACPI in Win2k, everythings on 7).
Microsoft 'fix' of reinstalling Win2k as an upgrade and choosing the Standard PC Hal (Complete failure since following their instructions didnt give me the option and totalled the original install).


Please, no untested ideas, no 'It works for me' (Gotta love those, since they of course fix the problem) just let me know if you hit this problem and how you overcame it (And the best way to get rid of ACPI since that damn thing's the culprit as far as I can see)

sutty

I didn't see anything about 4in1 drivers there? you really need them to have the system running stable. 4.30 and up are the best ones

you may also want to try here

http://www.viahardware.com/faq/kt7/kt7faq.htm its the best FaQ for the KT7 out on the net. It also has the 4in1's on the download page.


GL

---

Ciaran Sutcliffe
aka: sutty
[HIV]sutty
For a good time goto:
http://www.hotinternetvirgins.com

sutty

also you may want to get SP2, it has got alot of bug fixes in it. but you dont need SP1 at all if you get that

---

Ciaran Sutcliffe
aka: sutty
[HIV]sutty
For a good time goto:
http://www.hotinternetvirgins.com

_CreeD_

Gah, lost in the edit, sorry. 4.32 4/1 installed.
I've gone through everything in that Faq, bar the ACPI 'removal' which didn't work.

I ghosted it before removal and might try setting it from ACPI to standard PC without a reinstall again. Cant be any worse.

Cheers.

[This message has been edited by _CreeD_ (edited 24-07-2001).]

lphchild

I did the same install on Friday...
worked fine for me with Win2K, didn't install the service packs(problems with SBlive 5.1) only the AGP hotfix(included in SP2)


Basically my procedure was ..
Blank disk drive..
Floppy Win2K boot disks..
Let it do it's thing(Formatted NTFS)
followed these instructions...

http://www.kowal.linnt.com/win2k.htm

is fine now.. a few hangs but installed the hotfixs at the above link and is purring now..haven't set up the RAID array, though -if that's where yours is falling over.

hope this is some help..

lph

oops forgot - I used the BIOS settings in the FAQs at overclockers.co.uk as well.

[This message has been edited by lphchild (edited 24-07-2001).]

_CreeD_

Well 2k crashed at the very end of installing SP2 (express, so no backup), which then killed the entire installation.
Thank god for Ghost.

Anyway, I think I have it sorted. I backleveled the BIOS from 3r+ to 3c and that did a little good (got 1 or 2 mins of 3d before the freeze). Backleveling the 4/1 drivers to 4.30 and reapplying the AGP reg fix seems to have finished the job. (Was able to run about 20 mins of TFC without fault).

Ill try SP2 tomorrow.

Thanks for the help guys, much appreciated.

Ps. The Raid array was a problem at first. I installed to it, and had to tell Win2k twice to get the driver from the floppy (ie. after the first reboot if you don't press f6 and load it again it will seem to continue and then hit you with a STOP error. Loading it the second time gets it to copy the driver over and it's fine from then (except for making it the D drive (I have another drive as primary master but boot to the Array. If you boot to the array before installing Win9x it'll stay as C from then on, but Win2k switches it at the end - pain for shared apps that store homepaths in their own INI files)

[This message has been edited by _CreeD_ (edited 25-07-2001).]

sutty

You also know that you have to keep the High point drivers installed if you are not going to use RAID, abd that you have to keep the Drives at the same version as the BIOS version. ie: 1.03b RAID bios needs the 1.03b high point drivers in win2k

---

Ciaran Sutcliffe
aka: sutty
[HIV]sutty
For a good time goto:
http://www.hotinternetvirgins.com

_CreeD_

New fangly bits=good....old = bad....
But yes the early bird catches the bug.

Nice OS, just used Hibernate to restore from last night and it was perfect. And you've gotta love those shadows.

[This message has been edited by _CreeD_ (edited 25-07-2001).]

Gerry

and the moral of the story is, don't update your bios unless absolutely necessary. I think a lot of your problem may have come from running a brand new highpoint bios, which warns it can ruin earlier raid arrays, and you may not have had the latest highpoint drivers in win2k. Also disabling agp 4x and fast writes can cure lockups a lot, since these "features" only seem to work with particular combinations of drivers and bios, which fortunately you seem to have found.