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Could you check to see if you have the latest driver set for your RAID? Do you have onboard audio or are you using a sound card? Do you have one or two graphics cards? I'm assuming your RAID controller is onboard. It sounds like there's a driver conflict on your system. Start with the RAID controller, move to audio, and then to your graphics card(s).
The computer is a brand new Gateway 541X which has an Nvidia 680i LT motherboard. The RAID controller is onboard. In all of my recent discussions with Gateway and Nvidia, nobody has brought up a driver issue. It is clocked at the latest supported speed (800 MHz) so I would hope the drivers are correct. But I will check - it is just hard to believe that a two day old computer is already out of date. The onboard audio is turned off by Gateway (in the BIOS) since it comes with a Creative X-fi Extreme Gamer audio card. This is a Gateway somewhat custom card but since I am replacing it with the PCIe version (I need the one PCI port on the motherboard for a modem), I know that the sound card has the latest driver set. One graphics card NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT - I will check to be sure.
The shutdown of the SRD always results in a blue screen of death with NVRAID.sys (I believe that is what I said) in the error message so my guess is a RAID conflict. Since Ghost 12 is old by RAID technology dates, I suspect your side of the equation. But again I will check. Thanks for the response. Ken Goodwin
Since you mentioned a customer SRD in your first message (that actually will grab the driver set off your system and use that within it’s Win PE driver set) we could potentially be seeing a problem with the driver that might not have been discovered by Nvidia (considering the age of the system and the newness of the model). Please let me know what you find out.
I checked all of the drivers on both the Gateway and NVIDIA web sites. There was a graphics card driver update that was released in early May which I updated but otherwise everything else was current. I ran the stock Ghost 12 disk in the recovery (boot) mode, went thru the start networking services and mapped a network drive and when I exited the recovery environment, the system crashed pointing to NVRAID.sys address 87A4BC1C base at 87A4A000 DateStamp 4522ff6b. I noticed that the disk activity light was continuous ON. I would expect the same in my custom SRD but can run a test if you desire. I saw nothing of notice in the event logs although I will admit the difference between Vista and WinXP in this area is substantial. I am more familiar with the XP event environment. Crashing on the way out of a recovery is not a problem as long as it recovers my system when I really need it. Let me know if I can be of any futher assistance. Send me Ghost 14 and I will test it for you!!
Hi Ken,
I've sent you an email requesting additional information. Please let me know about this info at your earliest convenience. Thanks!
When I boot to the SRD, I can map the network drive but when I attempt to Recover My Computer using the recovery data on the network drive, I get the following:
Problems with some the entries in the system index file. Entry 1 Error EC950006: The Destination is not valid Entry 2 Error ED950006: The Destination is not valid
These two errors are the two partitions of my RAID 0 hard drive, one is the logical C: drive and the other is the logical D: drive which is the Gateway recovery data partition.
Thus the Symantec recovery environment doesn't work with/can't restore a NVIDIA RAID disk configuration. (My Gateway FX541X computer uses the NVIDIA nForce 680i LT motherboard.) This is tied to the blue screen of death problem which doesn't like NVIDIA NVRAID.SYS driver anytime I exit the Symantec Recovery Environment. [Every time I exit the SRD, I get a blue screen which says it has a problem with NVRAID.SYS]
Everything works fine in normal operating system environment (Visa Home Premium) but nothing works while within the SRD environment since it can not see my computer's hard disk. I can see all of CD/DVD drives and memory card readers but not my C: drive nor my Gateway recovery partition which is the D: drive. When I attempt the SRD command "Check Hard Disk for Errors" all it only allows me to check is the Boot X disk, not my RAID 0 hard disks.
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Here is the insight I received on the NVIDIA Hardware User's Forum:
The nvidia raid is a "software raid" solution. As a result it requires drivers (software) to recognize the raid setup. This is why when you are installing windows on a raid setup, you have to hit F6 and load the raid drivers in order for Vista or XP to recognize the raid setup.
Or why when in Windows, if you have not installed the nvraid drivers but have created a raid array in the bios it won't see your raid setup. It will still see each physical hard disk (in the BIOS but not in the operating system environment).
With regards to norton ghost recovery boot disk, unless it includes support for the nvraid via software / drivers it won't ever recognize the raid setup.
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Here is my solution which allows me to recover from a hard disk crash while also solving the blue screen problem:
The software raid note (above) provided the key to having the Symantec Recovery Disk (SRD) work properly with the NVIDIA RAID hard disk configuration.
I downloaded the nForce driver package for my 680i LT motherboard (from the NVIDIA web page under Download Drivers) and digested the instructions on "Creating RAID F6 Install Floppy" The nForce driver package extracts to C:\NVIDIA\nForceWinVista\..\..\..\SATARAID which contains the WHQL SATA RAID Driver which was appropriate for my system with RAID enabled in the BIOS using two SATA drives.
The custom Symantec Recovery Disk (SRD) has an option to select drivers for the SRD (Custom, page 29 of the Ghost 14 software documentation). This is slick since it starts with the drivers that it has determined are required and allows the user to add additional drivers to the custom SRD. I added nvrd32.inf which is in the IDE\WinVista\sataraid folder of the nForce driver package for my specific motherboard. I went thru the process to create the custom SRD and then tested it by booting from it --> my RAID 0 hard disk is completely visible within this custom SRD. After starting Network Services, I can Recover My Computer using the recovery points on my network drive. So I can now recover my system from a hard disk crash which was the objective.
Ghost 14 always worked within the Vista32 environment, it was just that the recovery or emergency restore disk (SRD) that wasn't working and just needed the NVIDIA SATA RAID driver (which was not ascertained in the Driver Validation Process). To add icing to the cake, when I exit the SRD environment, I no longer get the blue screen of death. So it seems as if everything is working as advertised.