my system hosed

Hi all,
I am really struggling here, I have been a bit gung ho and its coming back to haunt me.
Essentially I have totally fdisked my boot drive and erased the MBR using the MBRTool on Ultimate Boot CB thinking this would be a good starting position from which to do a clean install of Vista Beta 2.
With the DVD drive set to be the primary boot device I have restarted with the Windows disk in the drive. My CD/DVD drive is found on IDE Channel 1 Master with nothing on Secondary. My boot drive is found as the Channel 2 Master, again, there is no secondary drive on that channel. I have a couple of RAIDED drives on SATA.
After the DMI pool data is verified I get the BOOT FROM CD option, I choose it by hitting Enter. At this point the screen goes blank and the cursor hovers in the top left of the screen, I get a couple of flashes from the CD drive LED and then, nothing. Weirdly though the hard drive LED is continually lit. After a few minutes I get a warning beep, I get scared and I shut the system down!
Now, I am a lowly app developer, I have no knowledge of hardware or OS internals and I am completely stuck.
Can anyone help me out?
Thanks Dave

Dave Lilly wrote:

Hi all,
I am really struggling here, I have been a bit gung ho and its coming back to haunt me.
Essentially I have totally fdisked my boot drive and erased the MBR using the MBRTool on Ultimate Boot CB thinking this would be a good starting position from which to do a clean install of Vista Beta 2.
With the DVD drive set to be the primary boot device I have restarted with the Windows disk in the drive. My CD/DVD drive is found on IDE Channel 1 Master with nothing on Secondary. My boot drive is found as the Channel 2 Master, again, there is no secondary drive on that channel. I have a couple of RAIDED drives on SATA.
After the DMI pool data is verified I get the BOOT FROM CD option, I choose it by hitting Enter. At this point the screen goes blank and the cursor hovers in the top left of the screen, I get a couple of flashes from the CD drive LED and then, nothing. Weirdly though the hard drive LED is continually lit. After a few minutes I get a warning beep, I get scared and I shut the system down!
Now, I am a lowly app developer, I have no knowledge of hardware or OS internals and I am completely stuck.
Can anyone help me out?
Thanks Dave

Why is your optical drive on Channel 1 and you hard drive on Channel 2? I had a problem with a configuration like that once and had to switch things around.
Which drive do you want to install Vista to? The IDE or your SATA RAID? I have seen posts here where people could not Vista to install to a RAID, or, the RAID had to be disabled/disconnected to install to an IDE drive.

Why is your optical drive on Channel 1 and you hard drive on Channel 2?

Because that's how it came!! The builders deviated from my specs on a couple of points, I have never really had much confidence in the build quality and now it seems this is another issue they have introduced that I will have to put right.
I want to put the OS on the IDE drive, is there anything I need to know?
Thanks for the tip.

"John Boy" wrote in message

Dave Lilly wrote: Hi all,
I am really struggling here, I have been a bit gung ho and its coming back to haunt me.
Essentially I have totally fdisked my boot drive and erased the MBR using the MBRTool on Ultimate Boot CB thinking this would be a good starting position from which to do a clean install of Vista Beta 2.
With the DVD drive set to be the primary boot device I have restarted with the Windows disk in the drive. My CD/DVD drive is found on IDE Channel 1 Master with nothing on Secondary. My boot drive is found as the Channel 2 Master, again, there is no secondary drive on that channel. I have a couple of RAIDED drives on SATA.
After the DMI pool data is verified I get the BOOT FROM CD option, I choose it by hitting Enter. At this point the screen goes blank and the cursor hovers in the top left of the screen, I get a couple of flashes from the CD drive LED and then, nothing. Weirdly though the hard drive LED is continually lit. After a few minutes I get a warning beep, I get scared and I shut the system down!
Now, I am a lowly app developer, I have no knowledge of hardware or OS internals and I am completely stuck.
Can anyone help me out?
Thanks Dave
Why is your optical drive on Channel 1 and you hard drive on Channel 2? I had a problem with a configuration like that once and had to switch things around.
Which drive do you want to install Vista to? The IDE or your SATA RAID? I have seen posts here where people could not Vista to install to a RAID, or, the RAID had to be disabled/disconnected to install to an IDE drive.

Dave Lilly wrote:

Why is your optical drive on Channel 1 and you hard drive on Channel 2?
Because that's how it came!! The builders deviated from my specs on a couple of points, I have never really had much confidence in the build quality and now it seems this is another issue they have introduced that I will have to put right.
I want to put the OS on the IDE drive, is there anything I need to know?
Thanks for the tip.

Maybe the 1st step should be to disable the RAID in the BIOS so it is not visible to Vista.
If that doesn't work, then you'll have to open up the computer and switch the cabling of the IDE drives. Either switch them at the motherboard connectors or switch the cables at the back of drives. You may need to look at your BIOS settings for your drives afterwards to ensure the channel 1 is "Auto" detect and not "CD/DVD".
Other settings to check for Channel 1, or Primary Master, if applicable to you BIOS settings:
LBA/Large -> Auto Block -> Auto PIO Mode -> Auto DMA Mode -> Auto SMART -> Auto 32Bit Data Transfer -> Enabled

Dave Lilly wrote:

Hi all,
I am really struggling here, I have been a bit gung ho and its coming back to haunt me.
Essentially I have totally fdisked my boot drive and erased the MBR using the MBRTool on Ultimate Boot CB thinking this would be a good starting position from which to do a clean install of Vista Beta 2.
With the DVD drive set to be the primary boot device I have restarted with the Windows disk in the drive. My CD/DVD drive is found on IDE Channel 1 Master with nothing on Secondary. My boot drive is found as the Channel 2 Master, again, there is no secondary drive on that channel. I have a couple of RAIDED drives on SATA.
After the DMI pool data is verified I get the BOOT FROM CD option, I choose it by hitting Enter. At this point the screen goes blank and the cursor hovers in the top left of the screen, I get a couple of flashes from the CD drive LED and then, nothing. Weirdly though the hard drive LED is continually lit. After a few minutes I get a warning beep, I get scared and I shut the system down!
Now, I am a lowly app developer, I have no knowledge of hardware or OS internals and I am completely stuck.
Can anyone help me out?

Did the Ultimate Boot CD boot OK in the same DVD drive? If it did then something is wrong with the Vista DVD or the drive isn't working properly with DVD's. Is there data you need to keep safe on the RAID array? If there is then I recommend you physically disconnect the SATA drives while installing Vista. My recommendation would be to set the IDE hard drive as the master on the primary IDE controller, set the DVD drive somewhere else, disconnect the SATA drives and install Vista. Once Vista is installed you can try to install the RAID drivers and reconnect the SATA drives if you want. If the data on those drives is important to you then I recommend you leave them disconnected while testing Vista.
Make sure you have backups of any important data before doing any of the above suggestions.
-- Kerry MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User www.VistaHelp.ca