vista NIGHTMARE!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Troy McClure
  • Start date Start date
T

Troy McClure

Everything Im about to describe works flawlessy in XP.

Been running vista rtm for a while now at work and on my laptop. I held off
installing it at home because I was in the middle of building a new system.
Well this weekend all my parts are here and I've spent the entire time
trying to get Vista to install and boot.

I have always booted XP to a 15,000rpm Seagate Cheetah SCSI drive on an
Adaptec Ultra320 PCI SCSI controller. The first thing I did was go to the
adaptec site to see if a vista driver was available. I learned that there
WILL be a vista driver available to download soon but that a driver for my
card is already included on the vista rtm dvd.

OK... all systems go, boot to the vista dvd... get to the point where you
have to pick a drive to install on, vista sees the cheetah drive but says
something like "your computers hardware might not support booting to this
drive" (here we freakin go!)... i try creating a partition, no good... still
says the same thing. i try formatting the partition, same thing.. (doing all
this in the advanced menu of the vista setup). i find an MS KB article on
this error that says something ridiculous to me like "vista setup no longer
writes signatures to disk due to possible data loss. when you get this
error, boot to another windows cd (xp i assume), create a partition, thus
writing a signature, then boot back to the vista disk. huh?!?!? well i try
this... several times. one time out of the 10 i was able to get past that
screen and actually get all the way through the install... then when it
rebooted, it hung on "press any key to boot to dvd"... ok, lets try again.
this time when i choose the disk to install on i get "windows requires a
valid system volume for installation to continue"...

im really scratching my head thinking why the $%@& would MS so dramatically
change the way the installer works when it was fine before??? needlessly to
say when i boot to an xp cd i can install and everything is great.

where can i even start with this???
 
PS...

for testing, i installed XP on the problem hardware and it worked fine. i
also took the scsi card and drive out of the new system, put it in a
different one, and vista installed ok! wtf???

also, if i install vista on a SATA drive in the new system, it works fine
and once i boot to windows i can use the scsi drive just fine!! so what
could possibly be the issue here?
 
vista >NIGHTMARE



Troy McClure said:
PS...

for testing, i installed XP on the problem hardware and it worked fine. i
also took the scsi card and drive out of the new system, put it in a
different one, and vista installed ok! wtf???

also, if i install vista on a SATA drive in the new system, it works fine
and once i boot to windows i can use the scsi drive just fine!! so what
could possibly be the issue here?
Click to expand...
 
PS...

for testing, i installed XP on the problem hardware and it worked fine. i
also took the scsi card and drive out of the new system, put it in a
different one, and vista installed ok! wtf???

also, if i install vista on a SATA drive in the new system, it works fine
and once i boot to windows i can use the scsi drive just fine!! so what
could possibly be the issue here?
Click to expand...

It sounds to me like a BIOS or Firmware problem, either the Adaptec card or
the computers bios. Check with Adaptec and see if you are using the latest
firmware for the card, also check that you have the latest bios for the
motherboard. Also, you may need to tweak the cards firmware settings.

Vista has changed it's entire boot process to be more in line with EFI
(though 32 bit vista doesn't officially support EFI). And uses a new boot
loader.
 
It sounds like either some subtle incompatibility between the SCSI card and
the motherboard or a chipset driver or BIOS problem.
 
I think if your SCSI was the only drive in the system it may have worked.
But (apparently - if I read your messages right) you also have a SATA drive.
Just like SATA would take boot priority over an IDE, I betcha SATA takes
boot priority over the SCSI (with the Adaptec controller card). When you
were booting XP from the SCSI in your other system, did it have a SATA drive
installed too? I dunno...

-Frank
 
Oops... backwards... I meant IDE take boot priority over SATA. Anyway, I may
be wrong altogether.

-Frank
 
Troy said:
Everything Im about to describe works flawlessy in XP.

Been running vista rtm for a while now at work and on my laptop. I held
off installing it at home because I was in the middle of building a new
system. Well this weekend all my parts are here and I've spent the
entire time trying to get Vista to install and boot.

I have always booted XP to a 15,000rpm Seagate Cheetah SCSI drive on an
Adaptec Ultra320 PCI SCSI controller. The first thing I did was go to
the adaptec site to see if a vista driver was available. I learned that
there WILL be a vista driver available to download soon but that a
driver for my card is already included on the vista rtm dvd.

OK... all systems go, boot to the vista dvd... get to the point where
you have to pick a drive to install on, vista sees the cheetah drive but
says something like "your computers hardware might not support booting
to this drive" (here we freakin go!)... i try creating a partition, no
good... still says the same thing. i try formatting the partition, same
thing.. (doing all this in the advanced menu of the vista setup). i find
an MS KB article on this error that says something ridiculous to me like
"vista setup no longer writes signatures to disk due to possible data
loss. when you get this error, boot to another windows cd (xp i assume),
create a partition, thus writing a signature, then boot back to the
vista disk. huh?!?!? well i try this... several times. one time out of
the 10 i was able to get past that screen and actually get all the way
through the install... then when it rebooted, it hung on "press any key
to boot to dvd"... ok, lets try again. this time when i choose the disk
to install on i get "windows requires a valid system volume for
installation to continue"...

im really scratching my head thinking why the $%@& would MS so
dramatically change the way the installer works when it was fine
before??? needlessly to say when i boot to an xp cd i can install and
everything is great.

where can i even start with this???
Click to expand...

I think the clue was when Vista said during install "your computers
hardware might not support booting to this drive" and your comment "I
learned that there WILL be a vista driver available to download soon but
that a driver for my card is already included on the vista rtm dvd."

I suspect that the driver in the RTM built doesn't support booting,
rather just supports basic stuff. When Adaptec release their driver,
you may find that one supports booting.

D
 
thanks everyone. yeah, ive tried everything you guys mentioned (even making
the scsi drive the only drive plugged in to the mobo) im going to contact
adaptec today and see if they have anthing to say.
 
ok new clue!! i hope someone knows more about low level boot stuff than i
do...

i thought for a test i would try installing xp then upgrading to vista.
currently there are 4 drives in the system... 3 SATA and 1 SCSI, all empty
with no partitions defined. when i go to install xp on the scsi drive setup
says ok but to install xp on this partition we have to also write some
startup files to [the first SATA drive... disk 0 id 0 bus 0]

so... whats going on here? keep in mind i HAVE tried the scsi install of
vista when it was the ONLY drive attached.
 
I have read the messages so far and it's a setup problem. You have to decide
yourself which device is going to be used to boot from. In the setup from
the Adaptec card you are able to select a device for booting or if no device
may be used. The same for the BIOS from the MB there are setting to allow
which devices are available for boot.
You may even select a SATA drive for booting, no problem, but you have to be
able to set the BIOS as you wish and the options need to be available, but
most modern BIOSes have them.

Remember though, the default for any BIOS is to boot from the first ATA
device. If no ATA devices are present and the BIOS support this it may use
the SATA device if the default is to have (PATA) support to kick in if no
ATA is mounted as bootable.

You have to look in the Bioses from both the MB and the SCSI card to set all
correct to your needs.

Ko.
 
the scsi drive is visible in the mobo bios and is set to first in the boot
order.

update to my original post: i CANT install xp... i assumed i could because
the setup let me get further with xp than it does with vista but when i
install xp, all goes well during the text based setup, then when its
finished and reboots, it boots to the cd again! completely NOT booting to
the drive it just copied files to! this is the same thing vista does... so i
can install the OS but it still wont BOOT to the drive after the install.

ugh
 
Did you let the install look for needed drivers?
Though the BIOS sees the drive it is very possible the needed drivers to be
able to boot are not installed by default.

I know have to do the same if I setup a machine with SCSI and other (NON
ATA) drives.

Ko.
 
Agreed. He needs to install the necessary drivers at F6 during the XP
install. Both SATA (unless the mobo has native support) and SCSI. As to
Vista, if they don't have drivers for SCSI card yet, You can try the XP
drivers and see if they work. Sometimes they will, but again both drivers
should be installed if the mobo doesn't provide native support.
 
Have you tried disabling all the additional drive controllers in the
motherboards BIOS, leaving only IDE 1 (and 2 if the new motherboard has two
IDE channels) and the SCSI card?
Possibly SATA 1 and 2 as well as some boards do not allow you to disable all
SATA.
 
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