Slipstream SATA Drivers

[vwgtiturbo]

Hello all. I am new to this forum, stumbling upon it while searching for a way to slipstream my SATA drivers so I wouldn't need a floppy. My current (and other two older systems) don't have a floppy drive, so it has always been a pain in the rear dissecting my wife's computer, slaving the floppy into mine... you know the drill. Anyways, I was wondering if there was a way to do this that actually works. I have seen several things online about doing this, and yesterday, tried all of them, including one that was specifically written for my board (Asus A8V Deluxe) and had alot of weird things happen:
1) when the system boots from the CD, everthing appears normal. I can see the drivers I slipstreamed actually get loaded (VIA 8237)
2) for some reason, the EULA doesn't show up
3) I can see the hard drive, so I am assuming the drivers loaded correctly.
4) I can delete/format the partition on my SATA drives as usual.
5) When the system reboots after copying the installation files, I get a BSOD, something about problems that may damage the system... stop error yadda yadda yadda

No matter what I do (burn the slipstream CD slower, use different programs to extract the original CD prior to building the slipstreamed disc, etc.), I can never get past the first reboot, in which the installation should start.
I did find a site that said something about adding a [Data] section to the Winnt.sif file, but that also did me no good.
WTF?

Just a side note, my slipstreaming of XP discs with SP1a and SP2 works like a charm, so I am not sure what gives in this case. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

[sybrows]

they need an F6 at stup there is a way to do it on these ere pages,
BrOw


edit : not v helpful sorry tis late

[vwgtiturbo]

Well, what a mess I have gotten myself into... Today, I started slipstreaming sp1a and sp2 onto seperate discs (with instructions found on the eldergeek).
First, I followed these instructions, then burned one disc with sp1a slipstreamed, then one with sp2 slipstreamed, then another with sp2 and my sata drivers slipstreamed.
Next, I ran the installation on an SATA drive, with the sp2/sata slipstreamed disc. Keep in mind, yesterday, I could only get to the black screen after the first reboot before my 07B stop error. Today, I got to the first reboot, RIGHT after you see the WinXP logo. WEEE!!! oh boy... Completely frustrated, I decided to do something different...
I installed an IDE hard drive in my system, just to see if the plain sp1a and sp2 slipstream worked. I first tried the sp2 stream on my IDE drive. Everything installed fine, but once I was using the system, I could only copy from my DVD drive every so often. When it didn't work (trying to copy files), it would say that "The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error". It would say this 7 or 8 times out of ten. So, I formatted again, this time using the sp1a s'stream disc. Also, installed fine, but I had the same da$% error when reading files from the DVD drive.
Now, the odd thing is... if I use my standard winxp pro disc, and take the time to slave my wife's floppy drive into my system (I refuse to put one in my system), everything works well. It must have something to do with the stream (keep in mind that I have tried s'streaming each disc 3 or 4 times, so I am not thinking that the discs are bad... I am using Taiyo Yuden 52x burned at 4x, if anyone is curious).
Basically, here is a summary of the results:
1. with my regular cd and a floppy drive--->IDE and SATA installs are golden, and the system runs like a dream.
2. with sp1a disc, IDE drive---> I/O errors
3. with sp2 disc, IDE drive--->I/O errors
4. with sp1a,SATA disc, SATA drive--->Stop Error
5. with sp2,SATA disc, SATA drive--->Stop Error

I am getting ready to pull my hair out.

[DaftpuNk]

Try a different optical drive for the write and read procedures.

Failing that, install a f***ing floppy drive you fewl! They ARE needed even nowadays, so get over having one in your PC! They're still worthwhile!

[vwgtiturbo]

Try a different optical drive for the write and read procedures.

Failing that, install a f***ing floppy drive you fewl! They ARE needed even nowadays, so get over having one in your PC! They're still worthwhile!

NOOOOO!! I REFUSE!!! I will not cave in to the floppy god, just to use it once every quarter, when I format!! LOL

In any case, the problem is now solved, as of 4am (what a long night...)

Let's put it this way... I am a da$% idiot. I have been doing this for years, and a simple mistake cost me about 6 hours of frustration (and a few lost hairs, which I can't afford to lose).

When I first started researching slipstreaming SP2, I looked through about 3000 Google results, and NONE of them told how to do this with my board, except 1. Only 1. And that one... was wrong for me. That one was based on the Promise SATA controller, instead of the VIA (the Promise controller is for two other channels, and I didn't want to take the easy way out, and use those channels... hard-headed...). One of the first things I saw was XPCREATE. I downloaded it, but never used it. I figured that it looked easy enough, so I didn't want to learn another program, if I could do it myself with a little work. This will come back to bite me later...

Well, when my SATA driver/SP2 slipstream didn't work (when I was getting the STOP ERRORS on the first setup reboot), I installed an IDE HDD, and rebuilt a slipstream on my wife's machine with only SP2 to see if it was the SATA part that was screwy, or SP2. Well, after the installation, I was plaqued by I/O errors anytime I tried to write to the HDD. I also experienced random times where the screen would go black, and not come back (I had to turn the PSU power off, then back on). One more thing... Sometimes (about every third 'black screen'), my system would lock up on the BIOS boot logo (where it has this nice pic of an ASUS logo). At this point, I am furious. I just had this system running the other day, and did not have any hardware problems (I just built the system last week).
To make a long story short, I started looking around in the case to see if I had inadvertently knocked a connector lose when I was slaving the IDE HDD into the system, and what did I find? I had the jumper on the IDE HDD in the 'slave position' and the HDD was in the 'slave' position on the cable (I guess I am still used to the 40-conductor cables, where the 'master' goes in the middle, not on the end, like the 80-conductor). I had been using this drive as a slave on my old system, and being used to SATA (which has no jumpers), it didn't even ocurr to me to check them when I slaved the drive in. Son of a... After I was done beating my head against the desk, I swapped the jumper, put it on the end of the cable, and reinstalled Windows. Ran nicely after that!

So, I then went to my wife's system, and slipstreamed another SP2 disc, in a vain attempt to get the SATA drivers to work correctly (I threw the other ones away, thinking that they were screwed up, and that SP2 was the devil). I tried to s'stream my SATA drivers a few more times, with little success (instead of STOP ERRORs when the system reboots the first time, I got them when you see the XP logo, instead of right when the screen goes black). YEAH! I earned another second or so of a working system!

After doing some thinking, I decided that my PCI\VEN... info in the WINNT.SIF must be wrong, as I know that the driver was correct.

SO, when I first started trying to do this, I would open the WINNT.SIF file, and copy the stuff from the directions I was reading (for the si3112 controller) into it, changing the si3112 stuff to 'viasraid', which is my driver.

After that didn't work, it clicked in my head the DEV_3112 corresponds to the si3112 controller, so I changed that to DEV_8237 (to reflect my VIA VT8237 controller). When that didn't work, I installed Windows on the IDE HDD (for about the 12th time), and looked at Regedit, and searched for 'viasraid'. BINGO. I found the string I needed (PCI\VEN_1106&DEV_3149). I never would have gotten this on my own, as DEV_3149 doesn't jive with the controller number, like it did with the Si3112. So, I changed that. Alas, it still didn't work.

Now, I am really mad... cursing MS for making us install things from a floppy (although it makes sense, as SATA wasn't out there when XP came out 3 years ago). I did some more reading on XPCREATE's website, as that seemed to be the way alot of folks do it, and I figured that they would have examples, so I could see if the instructions I was reading were wrong. I saw something about checking out XPCREATE.cab, to see if your SATA drivers had already been tested. Yes, they had, so I knew that it was possible. At this time, problem was clear...

All of the examples I saw for other boards (including the directions I was using) said to change the WINNT.SIF to read something like this:

[SourceDisksFiles]
si3112.sys = 1,,,,,,3_,4,1

[HardwareIdsDatabase]
PCI\VEN_1095&DEV_3112&SUBSYS_31121095 = "Si3112"
PCI\VEN_1095&DEV_3112&SUBSYS_34238086 = "Si3112"
PCI\VEN_1095&DEV_3112&SUBSYS_311215D9 = "Si3112"
PCI\VEN_1095&DEV_3112&SUBSYS_B0021458 = "Si3112"
PCI\VEN_1095&DEV_3112&SUBSYS_01661028 = "Si3112"
PCI\VEN_1095&DEV_3112&SUBSYS_82141033 = "Si3112"
PCI\VEN_1095&DEV_3512&SUBSYS_35121095 = "Si3112"
PCI\VEN_1095&DEV_3512&SUBSYS_01661028 = "Si3112"

[SCSI.load]
si3112 = si3112.sys,4

[SCSI]
si3112 = "Silicon Image SiI 3112 SATALink Controller"



Back to XPCREATE.cab... I looked at the file in there, and lo and behold, I see something odd... Notice how, with the si3112 controller, there is a string that reads "si3112.sys = 1,,,,,,3_,4,1" under the [SourceDisksFiles] heading? Well, most of the examples for the si3112 controller say to do this, and some say somethig similar with "1,,,,,,3_,x,_4" or something like that. When I looked at the viasraid.oem in the XPCREATE.cab file, it said that it should have been "viasraid.sys = 1,,,,,,4_,4,1,,,1,4". After changing this, I s'streamed another disc, and it worked! I am typing on it now. Beautiful.

So, the lessons I learned?

1) NEVER overlook the obvious.

and

2) Do some reading before you jump into the project, so you don't scr@w yourself by getting into it before you are ready.