Windows 2003 ReInstall onto RAID5

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From: Corona (Corona_at_discussions.microsoft.com)
Date: 10/18/04 

Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 04:21:03 -0700

Hi,

I have a brand new server that crashed on Friday. It started cycling
through reboots. It would get to the point of the initial W2k3 splash screen
for a few seconds and then reboot. I ran tests on the hardware, and
discovered that one of the drives had failed in the RAID. I replaced the
drive and rebuilt the RAID. However the rebooting problem continued. I tried
safe mode and LKG, and it continued to just reboot. So I loaded up the
command console from the cd and ran the FIXBOOT command. This still did not
help. So now I am trying to reinstall the OS on a partition in the RAID, but
it keeps failing.

Windows sees the RAID during the initial loading phases, and I have all of
my controller drivers loaded correctly. But when I chose the partition to
install on, it tries to format and comes back with an error "Windows was
unable to format the partition. The disk may be damaged."

I tried to get around this by formatting the partition from the command
console, and it formatted correctly from there. The size of the partitions
are read correctly at the partition selection screen. I need an OS on the
system because all of the company files are in that RAID.

Does anyone have any suggestions before I call MS? I'd really appreciate
your help. This is critical.

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