Installation Glitch

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Guest

Installing the Vista beta on a primary 36GB SCSI HDD with 3 SATA drives as
data drives, and the installation keeps wanting to install on the SATA
drives, ignoring the SCSI. Only started to install on the SCSI drive once I
disconnected the 3 SATA drives.
As we build computers, any ideas as to why I ran into this problem, or is
this something I should tell Microsoft about?
 
Well, you might put this one down to how the BIOS enumerates the resources
it finds during POST. As for HD's it counts IDE drives first, and as long as
there is no SATA driver present those will count as IDE, with the SATA
driver present they will be counted after any IDE drives, but before any
SCSI drives and the SATA's will then be hooked up to the SCSI subsystem in
the OS. Perhaps the more technically minded would describe this differently,
but I believe this pretty much draws the big picture. So, until the BIOS
finds a replacement this is the sort of behavior we should expect.


Tony. . .
 
I'm really disappointed if thats the case. I've installed literally hundreds
of OS's and they've always installed to the boot partition, until now. The
SCSI HDD was the primary drive in the BIOS, set as the boot drive, with 3
SATA drives for data and Vista selected the SATA drive, even thought it was
not set as a bootable drive.
GO figure. My complaint was that, even when I selected the SCSI drive for
Vista to install to, it refused, and selected the SATA drive.
That is, IMHO, a glitch.
--
Ken
Buckner Computer Consulting


Tony Sperling said:
Well, you might put this one down to how the BIOS enumerates the resources
it finds during POST. As for HD's it counts IDE drives first, and as long as
there is no SATA driver present those will count as IDE, with the SATA
driver present they will be counted after any IDE drives, but before any
SCSI drives and the SATA's will then be hooked up to the SCSI subsystem in
the OS. Perhaps the more technically minded would describe this differently,
but I believe this pretty much draws the big picture. So, until the BIOS
finds a replacement this is the sort of behavior we should expect.


Tony. . .
Click to expand...
 
True, you could call it that. In all accounts, writing BIOS code seems to be
a challenge when it comes to synching with new development in hardware. It
would seem this behavior began with the advent of the firmware enabled SATA
compatible boards where the SATA support is often coupled with the RAID
functionality of the chipset.

I'd suggest that you try and unplug everything else that you don't
absolutely need to have the installation successfully complete when that is
in place you plug things back in, taking notes on the above and you have
some control over what ends up where. You may have your drive letters
re-ordered, but you should have some control. Write down a graphical chart
to aid your natural talent for tactics.

An alternative to this might be to disable the chipset RAID and SATA support
and install a Hardware board instead. (One that has driver support)

No guarantee that it works, it does for some. And, of course, see that you
have the latest BIOS!


Tony. . .


Ken said:
I'm really disappointed if thats the case. I've installed literally
hundreds
of OS's and they've always installed to the boot partition, until now. The
SCSI HDD was the primary drive in the BIOS, set as the boot drive, with 3
SATA drives for data and Vista selected the SATA drive, even thought it
was
not set as a bootable drive.
GO figure. My complaint was that, even when I selected the SCSI drive for
Vista to install to, it refused, and selected the SATA drive.
That is, IMHO, a glitch.
Click to expand...
 
Here, your advice and my common sense came together.
I unplugged the SATA drives and Vista went on the SCSI drive, because it was
the only drive on the computer. After I finished installing the OS, I just
plugged them in, and everything is happy.
I made it work, but I have a feeling that Microsoft will get more than a
couple of calls on this one.
 
Glad it worked - and although MS will hear about it, it really is a BIOS
issue. I assume that at one point everybody tried to cut corners when being
called up by people who didn't understand the BIOS setup utility. I sure
don't understand all of it, but over the years you do aquire a certain
familiarity with it, but quite a lot see it as a form of black magic.

For a while then it's smiling faces all around but then we find that
patching and corner-cutting doesn't stop us from getting into trouble.
People in engineering must learn that logical problems has to be solved at
the root, not by patching!

My personal experience.


Tony. . .
 
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