Re: Boot problems with RAID

I'm not sure what happened, I usually blame these unknown things on Gremlins...

John

sh2811 wrote:

P.S. Reconnected everything as it was before, i.e. both 750s mirrored and the old 320GB drive, and rebooted to the new installation on the now broken mirror. The Intel matrix storage console just happily kicks off in XP and starts rebuilding the RAID volume. The drives would definitely have been different now as I had booted to, and performed some actions on, just one of the 750s. Still leaves the question why it happened in the first place.
Thanks again.

"sh2811" wrote:


Hi John. This may be premature but maybe things are OK again. I have now rebooted with just one of the, now un-mirrored, 750s connected and the system did boot up OK. CHKDSK kicked in and found a couple of issues (did I see tracking log or tracking index? wasn't paying enough attention and of course it doesn't wait at the end of the test to allow you to actually read what it says!). I have yet to reconnect the other 750GB and rebuild the mirror but I'm assuming all will be well (hope I'm not tempting fate!).
I wanted to avoid having to un-RAID the drives as the rebuild takes an age but it seems to be the solution.
So thank you VERY much for your time and patience. I am still a bit baffled as to why it happened in the first place. Maybe I was daft to leave the drives hooked up and reboot to the old XP install but what would have happened to cause my problem? I would like to know the answer to that to satisfy my curiosity. I was wary of leaving the drives connected but thought that as long as I didn't write to them I wouldn't risk damaging the mirror and having to rebuild it. I certainly didn't think it would cause these problems. I guess something wrote to them behind my back!?!
By the way.... I think I'm right in thinking that anyone can give out advice on here but you have MVP in your user name. Is that a Microsoft..... V something Professional? Do you actually work for MS or is that an MS qualification?
Thanks again.

"John John (MVP)" wrote:


http://support.microsoft.com/kb/119467/EN-US/

I don't know what to make of the fact that the array looks ok from the system ROM or that the Recovery Console's map command appears to see it correctly, but the error message about disk hardware configuration problems tells us its trying to boot from the wrong disk or from a disk that is not on the system, the boot.ini file points to an invalid location.

http://blogs.msdn.com/ntdebugging/archive/2007/06/28/how-windows-starts-up-part-the-second.aspx

John


sh2811 wrote:


John, sorry to be an idiot but with what sort of boot floppy? The intel raid rom bios boot page, that starts after the main system rom boot page, indicates that the mirror is ok. Also when i'm in recovery mode and do a "map" there is only one 750gb drive listed which indicates to me that all is 'well' else it would list 2 750s wouldn't it?
Thanks.

"John John (MVP)" wrote:



The signature syntax in the boot.ini file is not unusual:

Windows May Use Signature() Syntax in the Boot.ini File
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/227704

Your mirror may have been broken. See if you can boot the installation with a boot floppy.

John

sh2811 wrote:



Ok... developments. FIXMBR didn't do anything because I of course needed to press F6 during the WinXP setup CD boot to install the correct RAID driver. Once installed I could then see the windows installation on the new 750 raid drives. (I had also disconnected the old 320GB XP installation drive by now). I ran FIXMBR (rightly or wrongly again) and rebooted to the 750 raid. I was then told that "<windowsroot>\system32\hal.dll" file is corrupt or missing.
My suspicion at this point was not that the file was missing or corrupt but rather that the boot process couldn't find it as maybe it didn't know where the <windowsroot> folder is. Rebooting to the recovery console to check, I could see the hal.dll folder in the correct folder.
Running "bootcfg /scan" found the c:\windows folder ok.
Running "bootcfg /add", which in hindsight I shouldn't have done really as the scan option showed all looked well, allowed me to add a new boot option for the c:\windows install.
A fresh boot and selecting this new boot option tells me that windows could not start because the "system32\drivers\pci.sys" file is missing or corrupt.. The curious thing here, and this might be a red herring, is that it says just "system32" and not c:\windows\system32 or windowsroot\system32 etc.... maybe that's normal though?
Of course the pci.sys file is there OK and I have no reason to suspect it is corrupt.
At this point I think I tried the bootcfg /rebuild option. When I boot now I am told that "windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem. Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware...". This further makes me think that the boot process doesn't know where the install folder is even thought bootcfg /scan shows it correctly.

The contents of my boot.ini file now contain a few installs!!:
[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=signature(d8e8b42e)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
signature(d8e8b42e)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="XP PRO bootcfg rebuild" signature(d8e8b42e)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Win XP Pro on C Drive" /SOS
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows Recovery Console" /cmdcons

I'm not sure why the first 2 xp installs have the signature field whereas the original 750 raid boot option "Microsoft Windows XP Professional" use the normal "multi(0)..." option. Is this because the system needs the intel raid driver for bootup and the first two boot options are actually correct?

Help!?!?
Thanks.

"John John (MVP)" wrote:




sh2811 wrote:




[snip]

When I went to boot back to the new system I altered the BIOS boot order back to the RAID 750s but now the system just reboots in a continuous loop. It gets past the BIOS boot to where it should start the windows load and flashes a VERY quick message that I can't pause in time to read properly.

Press the F8 key when the computer boots and change the option to have the computer restart on system failure and see if you can obtain information from the stop error message.

John





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