Maximum PC

Specs: A7N8X-E Deluxe mohterboard (newest BIOS from website)
2 WD Raptor 36 GIG serial 10,000 sp hard drives
2 - 512 mb sticks of Cruical 184 pin pc3200 memory
plextor dvdrw
floppy
thermaltake 420w power supply (exceeds mb specs)
256mb nvidia video card AGP
usb mouse
ps2 keyboard

I cannot get windows XP pro to load.

After I set up the raid on the motherboard via the jumpers, and load and run the raid instalation utility for the MB, and I install the drivers on windows XP via F6 (early in the installation), XP gets to the point where it says "SETUP IS STARTING WINDOWS" and hangs there, I let it hang the longest about 30 min, nothing.

WD tech support says I have done everything correctly.

After reading many similar probs with the speed of the proc, I turned off L2 cache, same problem.

If I disable the serial drives and install a regular IDE 7200 speed WD drive, windows loads fine.

Anyone have any suggestions for me?

i dont know if this is the problem but you can try another cable. sometimes this is the problem and believe me it happen to me. try this option and see what comes up. i thought one of your hdds was messed up and i was gonna recommend the dianostics utilty from WD but since you tested them already in the regular ide mode, it works fine.

Do they have different SATA drivers available? Try those.

If you have the latest bios for that motherboard....they just posted a new one the other day. Go into the bios and set your first boot device to SATA, with the new bios it gives you this option.

Nasty

I have bios ver 11, sata drives wont load as raid.

Tried just to use one drive to see if i could load windows on it, but when I got to the partitioning part, it only got to 81% and stopped.

I am guessing bad communication between the board and the drives for some reason.

Thanks for the replies, any others are welcome.

Culprit was one bad drive, together, neither would work correctly, one drive works fine, sending the other in for a replacement.