OSS won't boot to windows - RAID warnings on boot up
Hi,
I have an xp proffessional Dell Dimension. It had just one hard drive partitioned to show as C: & D: drives.
I added a new ITB hard drive as I needed more capacity. I had been reading about Acronis V11 so I downloaded that and used it to initialise the hard drive. I made 3 volumes on it.
I thought about using dynamic drives as Acronis seems to be describing them in a favourable light, tried it by changing the new (and still empty) hard drive to dynamic. Got a couple of warnings when rebooting so read a bit more and decided to change them back.
At some point I installed AOSS, probably by what I have read before I changed to dymamic and back. I saw no warning anywhere about not using Dynamic disks and AOSS and I spend ages having a good read through the pdf. I guess it must - or should - be in there somewhere but it should have big bold warnings in several locations if it causes this much greif.
Now it won't boot anywhere when it starts up. It says something about RAID BIOS being used on my hard drives but drives are not RAID drives. If I look in BIOS the drives are RAID and show healthy.
I was told to make a Acronis Boot Disk and turn off AOSS but the bootable version is a cut down version and has no such option.
On bootup other options are prompted like ESc and F6 etc but these do nothing.
I really dont want to lose 3 years of files on this pc, I just need to be able to boot to XP, I'm not bothered about keeping Acronis or not at this stage, my files come first. If I can get to them and back them up I'll try Acronis again.
Can anyone help please? all I'm getting from Acronis support is links to microsoft pages about repairing the boot sequence.
It says something about RAID BIOS being used on my hard drives but drives are not RAID drives. If I look in BIOS the drives are RAID and show healthy.
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Are you running a BIOS RAID setup? The above seems to state yes & no.
Thanks for the links Richard, I'll check these out later.
Mudcrab, if I go into my BIOS and select the hard drives it says "This drive is controlled by the RAID BIOS"
If I select SATA Operation it says RAID is ON, factory default is RAID on and SATA is configured for RAID on every boot.
Howerver when I try and start my pc, it stalls at the the first message (DOS) screen saying:
Ports 00, 01 AND 02 (old hard drive, cdrom and new hard drive) are controlled by RAID BIOS
Then:
RAID Volumes: None defined
It then lists the two hard drives and says in Bold Grenn text: Type/Status Non-RAID Disk
So somehow the disks are showing up as NOn-RAID when booting up the machine although in BIOS they are showing as controllled by RAID.
Any ideas?
That seems to imply that your BIOS is configured to handle RAID, but no actual RAID volumes have been created. Not surprising if you've just added a new drive and have not yet configured it as part of a RAID set. Everything you ever wanted to know (and more) about RAID set-ups with illustrations can be found at http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/393 . Note, in particular, the information on page 4 of that article about the boot process set-up requirements for the disks themselves, not just the system BIOS settings.
HOWEVER, before any of that, you might want to try disabling RAID entirely while you attempt to get your WinXP installation booting as it was previously on your original single (i.e. non-RAID) hard drive. If OSS has "taken over" on that primary drive, any RAID set creation at this point is only likely to complicate matters further. Just getting things back to booting the way they were before would seem to be the primary concern in the circumstances. Anyhow, I think that's probably what the Acronis techies have been trying to suggest in telling you to disable OSS and sending you to Microsoft's boot sequence fix-up pages.
Hi Richard,
I have made no changes at all to my original C:, D: drives so if these are saying in BIOS that they are controlled by RAID then why is it saying there are no RAID volumes?
Or has OSS deleted all RAID volumes not only from the new drive when I turned it to Dynamic and back but also my other drives for some weird reason? I deliberately made no changes whatsoever to my original hard drive so i wouldn't get this kind of problem :(
So my orinal drive isn't non-RAId or it wasn't, it just seems to be now for some reason. How do i fix this?
I have my XP install disk, I went to run the repair option but it's asking me for an administration password but there is no administaration passsword if this is the same as the main user password? I press enter as in no pasword and it says incorrect but when i log into windows normally I just click on the icon and I'm straight in.
I could try disabling RAID but how would I do that?
Thanks
I've just been reading the RAID article you posted and on page 4 that is just what I get on my screen:
"As we connected our two hard disk drives on the ports controlled by the chipset, the screen pictured in Figure 9 was shown. As you can see, no RAID is configured (the phrase “None defined” appears under “RAID Volume”, and the two hard disk drives are identified as “Non-RAID Disk”). So you need to press Control I while this screen is shown in order to configure your RAID system."
However Control +I does nothing, it just doesn't accept that command.
If you are not using a RAID setup, I recommend that you turn off RAID mode. The controller should have an AHCI mode and possibly an IDE Compatible mode. AHCI is more normal for newer computers. This setting should be located in the BIOS under SATA Controller or something similar.
There's nothing wrong with having non-RAID drives connected when in RAID mode. In fact, this is necessary when you want to use some RAID drives and some non-RAID drives. However, having RAID enabled and having no RAID drives may cause problems -- it depends on the system.
If the BIOS RAID screen on boot-up is new (it just started doing it), then somehow the controller's mode got changed. If it's not new and it's been showing that screen all along, then it's been running in RAID mode.
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Try using your normal password to get into XP from Repair Mode. It may work, especially if you have an Administrator account.
Otherwise, you may need to using something other than an XP CD to restore the MBR. A TI backup could be used, for example.
... if these are saying in BIOS that they are controlled by RAID then why is it saying there are no RAID volumes?
The mere fact that your motherboard has a RAID controller and that it is currently activated is an entirely separate issue from the actual creation (or not) of RAID volumes on your hard drives. Apparently you have not done the latter and, of course, before you added the second drive, there was not even any such possibility for the controller to detect and ask you about.
I could try disabling RAID but how would I do that?
Basically, early in the boot process, you press the key to enter the mobo BIOS setup (often the DELETE key) and do the reverse of the "Configure SATA as RAID" process that is described on page 4 of that article I linked to. Changing it to plain old fashioned IDE is probably the safest initial choice if available. If not, AHCI should be okay.
After that, if OSS is currently present in the master boot record (MBR) of your original first drive, it will be controlling its "jump to boot sector" initiating process. You can use the mbrfix.exe utilitity that I pointed to for getting rid of OSS and restoring a normal MBR on that drive. If that doesn't get you back to booting into WinXP normally, you may also need to use either the WinXP installation repair disk or the Microsoft bootsect.exe utility for restoring the active primary (C:) partition's boot sector.
If you are not using a RAID setup, I recommend that you turn off RAID mode. The controller should have an AHCI mode and possibly an IDE Compatible mode. AHCI is more normal for newer computers. This setting should be located in the BIOS under SATA Controller or something similar.
There's nothing wrong with having non-RAID drives connected when in RAID mode. In fact, this is necessary when you want to use some RAID drives and some non-RAID drives. However, having RAID enabled and having no RAID drives may cause problems -- it depends on the system.
If the BIOS RAID screen on boot-up is new (it just started doing it), then somehow the controller's mode got changed. If it's not new and it's been showing that screen all along, then it's been running in RAID mode.
---
Try using your normal password to get into XP from Repair Mode. It may work, especially if you have an Administrator account.
Otherwise, you may need to using something other than an XP CD to restore the MBR. A TI backup could be used, for example.
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I've never used a RAID setup as in backing up information and the like, I'd never heard of it until recently when I was looking at stand alone RAID servers for using at work.
I do remember loking at the hard drives in BIOS when installing the new hard drive and wondering why I couldn't see it in control panel wich was efinately before I installed the ADD and OSS software and it was set to RAID so I imagine it has always being using RAID for the last 4 years, I have just never looked at the opening boot up screen closely before as it has always worked fine.
So the boot up message:
"Ports 00, 01 AND 02 (old hard drive, cdrom and new hard drive) are controlled by RAID BIOS
Then:
RAID Volumes: None defined
It then lists the two hard drives and says in Bold Grenn text: Type/Status Non-RAID Disk"
may not be the cause of the trouble at all. Could this have been displaying all these years? is this not an error message, just a general information message shown on any pc that has non-raid disks using a RAID Bios setup?
It sounds like repairing the MBR is really what I need to do.
Thanks.
... if these are saying in BIOS that they are controlled by RAID then why is it saying there are no RAID volumes?
The mere fact that your motherboard has a RAID controller and that it is currently activated is an entirely separate issue from the actual creation (or not) of RAID volumes on your hard drives. Apparently you have not done the latter and, of course, before you added the second drive, there was not even any such possibility for the controller to detect and ask you about.
I could try disabling RAID but how would I do that?
Basically, early in the boot process, you press the key to enter the mobo BIOS setup (often the DELETE key) and do the reverse of the "Configure SATA as RAID" process that is described on page 4 of that article I linked to. Changing it to plain old fashioned IDE is probably the safest initial choice if available. If not, AHCI should be okay.
After that, if OSS is currently present in the master boot record (MBR) of your original first drive, it will be controlling its "jump to boot sector" initiating process. You can use the mbrfix.exe utilitity that I pointed to for getting rid of OSS and restoring a normal MBR on that drive. If that doesn't get you back to booting into WinXP normally, you may also need to use either the WinXP installation repair disk or the Microsoft bootsect.exe utility for restoring the active primary (C:) partition's boot sector.
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Sounds like I am jumping to the wrong conclusion about RAID, it sounds like RAID is not the problem and that message has probably always been there and I have just never noticed it.
I need to fix the MBR, I have my XP disk but it's asking for a administration password if I select R for repair mode, and yet I don't have a password on my main user profile. My son has a passsword on his I think but definately not mine.
If I try to ignore the password request though and just press enter it says wrong password :(
The RAID controller's notices and queries may not have been present until you added that second drive because, until then, there just wasn't any question about setting up any RAID volumes. But, in any case, I think you're beginning to get the picture about the real problem, which is almost certainly what the Acronis techies were trying to explain about the boot sequence itself. When OSS takes over the master boot record, it then controls the "jump to boot sector" part of the start up process. That's how it lets you choose amongst various operating systems on several drives and partitions. No different from Grub4DOS and other boot managers of that ilk, including Microsoft's own inferior BCD contraption.
Don't go running any unnecessary WinXP repair operations. The main body of your WinXP installation itself will NOT have been broken by Disk Director's OSS, and "fixing" the wrong thing is only likely to cause you more grief. Just fix your master boot record as the first step using that mbrfix.exe utility. Then, if necessary, the WinXP installation repair disk should not need any Windows administrator password just to fix your active partition's boot sector. But you can use Microsoft's bootsect.exe utility for that purpose if needed.
Incidentally, and probably irrelevant, the password the WinXP installation repair utility is looking for is whatever password was provided for the original administrator account set-up when WinXP was first installed. BUT, I repeat, it really shouldn't be necessary for the steps you actually need to take in these circumstances.
Thanks guys, your help is much appreciated, I'll let you know how it goes in a couple of days.