I deleted the raid driver now win xp wont boot

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Pakaty

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Jan 21, 2008
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I deleted the raid driver from a computer I built about 4 years ago and have since given to my parents. They said that startup was taking too long and I agreed with them. It was taking way too long for windows to boot up. I started with spyware/virus scans then defrag these seemed to help some but not as much as I hoped. So I decided to try deleting some of the start up programs. The raid driver came with the MOBO and loaded in XP on start up. I only have one SATA drive and two IDE drives and was not running a raid array. The SATA hard disk is/was the C: drive with the operating system. I disabled the raid by exiting the program with the taskbar icon by the clock. That seemed to have no affect on the system so I deleted it with add/remove programs. Now XP won't boot on the SATA drive. The Bios recognizes the SATA drive on booting up (I can see the drive on the bios screen) and then Xp logo may or may not briefly show on the screen then the computer reboots again and I get the windows screen saying there was a problem do I want to try safe mode ect. last known configuration that worked or boot normally. All those options send me into the same endless boot loop/cycle. I have tried to boot with and use windows cd recovery but windows does not recognize the drive. When I boot from the win XP cd and use the F6 function for the SCSI driver. I am told to put the driver disk in the A: drive (mine is a 3.5 floppy and wont hold the raid driver which is a 7mb file) and trying to use the cd with the raid driver on it does not work as windows recovery wants to use the A: drive for installing the driver. I have now reinstalled XP onto one of the IDE drives and at first did not see the SATA drive. Now I have installed the motherboard drivers onto the IDE drive with the newly installed XP system and XP sees the SATA drive and the files on it. But what I really want is to get the SATA drive and all its files back to booting up as before.

Does anyone have recommendations on how I can get the SATA drive back to booting as the C: drive? Without having to reformat it?

Also tried the seagate tools cd. It will help me install a new drive but wants to reformat it. Seagate diagnostics sees and scans the SATA drive and reports no problems.

System is:
Windows XP Pro
Soyo KT600 ULTRA Motherboard
AMD XP 2200 CPU
512 RAM
ATI ALL IN WONDER 8500 Video
Seagate Sata 150Gig HD
Maxtor IDE 80Gig HD
Maxtor IDE 8Gig HD
1 DVD ROM
1 CD-RW

Thank You in advance for all input.
 
In the BIOS do not see an option to enable or disable the RAID.

There is an option called: RAID/ATA &SCSI BOOT ORDER
They are:
SATA1,2,SCSI,SATA3,4... (DEFAULT) My BIOS has been using this.
SCSI,SATA1,2,SATA3,4... I have tried this.
SATA3,4,SCSI,SATA1,2... I have tried this.

What I have not done is trying to plug the SATA drive to ports 2, 3 or 4 on the MOBO. I guess I will try that now.

But, I think my problem is with the XP OS since I deleted the driver. Again...the XP logo flashes on the display (sometimes) after the BIOS loads. Or, I get the "Windows did not start successfully" screen.
(First boot device is SCSI) All other boot devices disabled or disconnected.
 
Sounds like you're at the point that a clean install, full format, of Windows is the best solution. I would use the SATA 1 port for the hdd with the OS. Some mobo have dedicated RAID SATA ports and settings have to be changed in the BIOS if you're using these in a non RAID set up
 
I got LUCKY! I tried quite a few things including replacing the registry with the repair registry. But the fix turned out to be after I wrote down all the files that loaded when I started in Safe Mode on the working IDE drive I compared them to the files on the non-bootable SATA drive. I found 1 file called "viamraid.sys" on the IDE that was not in the SATA folder:
windows\system32\drivers\viamraid.sys I copied and pasted to the SATA drive then started in the SATA in safe mode and it booted!!! I immediately went to System Restore and restored to a date before I made my original foul-up.

Thanks for the input!
 
can u help me out cuz i seem to have the exact same prob as this person were i deleted raid and it just loops.
im having a hard time understanding wat they did
 
First viamraid.sys is not just a raid driver. It is a driver for the SATA/150 and RAID capabilities on Mother Boards using the VIA chipset.

What pakaty did was to install xp on another drive that in effect became his temporary c drive and his other drive became a secondary. He was then able to access the original c drive to modify it as described.

Now that the solution is known there are option on how to fix it. I assume you have only 1 drive to work with. If this is the case you try the following.
1. Get a copy of the viamraid.sys file
2. Create a BARTCD start up disc. You can get info. on how to do this from the web. This disc will let you start your pc in a windows like environment without mounting your hd. You will be able to see the drive and access it as if it were a secondary drive. You should also be able to access your floppy or cd drive as well. Copy the viamraid.sys to the windows/system32/drivers folder. Reboot and if that was the problem you will be good to go.

You need to create some sort of start-up disc and then copy the file to the correct directory. Hope this helps.
 


I want to thank you so much, as I had the same problem uninstalling unwanted software.
Just took off my unbootable Hard Drive, connected it to another PC, copied the viamraid.sys file from a proper SATA driver installation folder that I found on the internet and pasted into the ..\Windows\system32\drivers folder on the unbootable Hard Drive.
This saved my day.
Thanks again, Pakaty.
 
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