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Thread: How to screw up your RAID 1 volume in Vista in 2 easy steps

  1. #1
    Ultimate Member Beeblequix's Avatar
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    How to screw up your RAID 1 volume in Vista in 2 easy steps

    Begin: Troubleshoot why PC won't come out of hybrid sleep/sleep mode.

    Read somewhere to 'remove battery from mobo', which means to set BIOS to failsafe defaults.

    Don't do this if you have a RAID and are forgetful. If you do the following steps at least remember to set your SATA drives back up as RAID otherwise it defaults back to IDE instead of the required RAID settings and borks it all up.

    MSI X58-Pro
    Core i7 920
    6GB DDR3
    Radeon 3870
    RAID 1 with (2) x 320GB Seagate Barracuda hard drives (enabled RAID in BIOS before imaging disks)
    (1)TB WD green SATA drive from failed My(Crappy) Book World Edition

    1. reset BIOS to fail"safe" defaults to troubleshoot separate issue (PC not coming out of hybrid sleep mode)
    2. forget that RAID needs to be set in BIOS for RAID to work properly and reboot

    And the rest of the story...
    3. Windows loaded but acted very slow.
    4. Noticed Intel Matrix Storage utility wasn't loading. Remembered that RAID *needs* to be set in the BIOS for it to work properly.
    5. <reboot>
    6. re-enabled RAID in BIOS
    7. <reboot>
    8. Can't load Windows due to some missing or corrupt file. Advised to insert Vista CD and use the auto-fix utility
    9. <reboot>
    10. boot from Vista disk
    11. Vista couldn't find my Windows installation
    12. <reboot>
    13. disabled 1TB drive from boot priority
    14. powered off
    15. pulled power from 1TB drive (only RAID drives and DVD remain)
    16. boot from Vista disk
    17. finally located Windows volume
    18. clicked the auto-repair-thingie
    19. <reboot>
    20. Missing or corrupt PCIIDEX.SYS
    21. *(#@@#$#$%!*&^!*(#*@#*(&! Microsoft and the goat they rode in on...
    22. <reboot>
    23. boot from Vista disk
    24. auto-repair again
    25. <reboot>
    26. Missing or corrupt PCIIDEX.SYS
    27. *i'm going to h311 for sure*
    28. boot from Vista disk
    29. auto-repair again
    30. "Searching for problems...." for very long time. Time passes.
    31. "Attempting repairs..." for very long time. More time passes.

    It's sleepy-time now but will repost the grand finale for posterity.
    "all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others".
    George Orwell

  2. #2
    Ultimate Member Beeblequix's Avatar
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    Followup:

    32. Vista couldn't automatically fix my issues. Blamed corrupt PCIIDEX.SYS file.
    33. <reboot>
    34. boot from Vista disk
    35. selected command prompt
    36. browsed to C:\Windows\System32\drivers and copied the following files to a ./backup directory:
    acpi.sys
    atapis.sys
    ataport.sys
    battc.sys
    compbatt.sys
    crcdisk.sys
    msahci.sys
    pciidex.sys
    dwmiacpi.sys
    37. replaced those files with the ones from the Vista disk (X:\Windows\System32\drivers)
    38. <reboot>
    39. Vista still wouldn't start, but because the boot loader was screwed up
    40. <reboot>
    41. boot to Vista disk again
    42. selected ~please fix my Vista installation~
    43. Vista actually repaired it correctly
    44. <reboot.
    45. Windows Vista login came up normally.

    Hope this helps someone else.
    "all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others".
    George Orwell

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