VIA RAID is killing me.

[SpacePyro]

Ok, so, my computer has been acting up quite recently, and I've not a clue why or how it has. It was working perfectly fine, until I got a blue "STOP" error screen, in which my computer rebooted itself. Then, it said that my RAID 0 stripes were broken...and only one RAID drive was detected. At one point after this, I ran chkdsk via the Winxp Recovery Console, and everything worked fine for a while. And now, I just turned on my computer, and it's not detecting any hard drives at all. I already tried removing the jumper that's associated with the BIOS, and I removed the CMOS battery. I tried to reinstall the VIA RAID drives through the WinXP installation disk by pressing F6, and then inserting the VIA disk. Still no solution. I need to find a way where my VIA drives will become detected, because both of them are not being detected...
any suggestions?

[Splash]

Do you have a BIOS raid setup screen? If so you're going to want to check that both drives are seen there. If not, I'd be looking at reseating and checking that both drives actually spin up.

[SpacePyro]

'VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT8237 Serial ATA RAID BIOS Setting Utility v2.01
Copyright (C) VIA Technologies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Scan Devices, Please wait...
Press < Tab > Key into User Window!

HardWare Initiate failed, Please Check Device!!!
The Bios does not be installed. Press <g> to continue!'

That's the setup screen I get...or at least, the screen I get when I boot up my computer. I usually get a splash screen of the ASUS SK8V motherboard logo, and then that shows up. I try to press Tab, but it won't show me the 'user window.' pressing G doesn't do anything, it just moves on to the Promise drivers, and I have no drives set up on Promise.

What do you mean by reseating?

[alsenior]

try re flashing the bios. the flash might e a little dodgy also check the cables are seated correctly and do not have any kinks in them

[SpacePyro]

Thanks, any program I can use to re-flash the BIOS? Or is there any method I can use to automatically re-flash it?

Sorry...it's been a really long time since I encountered a VIA error and talked about re-flashing..it's been a while

I checked the cables and everything was secure. I have some spare ATA wires though, so I might consider replacing them...I don't know if that will do anything, but you never know.

*edit*

All right, so I found some new drivers for my VIA BIOS...would it be in the best choice to install the new drivers through the WinXP Setup CD and then try to run it? I don't want to screw up my computer as much as it is right now..

*second edit*

So, I tried installing the new drivers via WinXP Setup CD, but I got a NEW error...

BOOTCD: Can't find NTLDR

I feel like I got this error though, because the entire BIOS was reset...
Man. I think I just screwed myself over...I guess the only I CAN do is just re-flash the BIOS, eh?
Originally that's what I did...my dad works at an avionics center and they reflash stuff all the time. He took my chip with the drivers there and one of his co-workers reflashed it with success. I'm just afraid that it might not work again, but, who knows?

[SpacePyro]

just to keep an update...

i was able (and i don't kinow HOW lol) to get one of the hard drives detected. the via bios says that there are two disk drives, and yet the main BIOS only detects one...i try to run my computer but i still get a blank screen. im trying to figure out how to run a chkdsk command, but i can't run any command prompt whatsoever..again, I try to run the winxp disk, but i get a NTLDR error..


any suggestions?
i feel like im almost there..