Vista x64 Boot Problem on raid 1

[Normann]

I ran into this today on my own computer.

I had a nasty crash due to a bad memory stick. While I was plugging unplugging stuff the BIOS seemingly reset on its own and my motherboard's raid got disabled. Vista was installed on that raid 1. After I've rebuilt the array I got a "\Boot\BCD" error.

First I tried to repair with the Vista CD. Next I plugged in a 3rd HD that has XP on it, booted from that and tried easyBCD to fix the boot record. Then I did another run with the Vista CD and did the FIXMBR, FIXBOOT, and REBUILDBCD commands. The first two commands ran, but the last one did not find an OS. That definitely did something because at next boot my raid degraded but my Vista did boot. However now Vista sees the two drives individually and it booted from a single drive. So I rebooted again, rebuilt the raid and now I get a missing winboot.exe error. Once again I booted into the Vista CD but now the repair tool sees 2 separate disks. Once I load the raid drivers it blue screens.

Learning experience I guess. No data loss btw I can boot into XP and I can see my raid. Anything else I could do before a reinstall? It seems keeping Vista on raid is a real pain with this old ASUS A8N-E board.

Thanks!

 

[nonchalant]

Sounds like a mainboard problem.

 

[Normann]

I don't think so. I did a reinstall and it has been behaving since then.

 

[sys-eng]

Sounds like you had disk caching turned on. The memory fault caused apparent corruption of the RAID. Some on-board RAID controllers use system RAM for disk caching rather than special memory for that purpose.

It may not have been corrupted but the RAID suspected corruption. How it overcomes such corruption is dependent on the RAID software and/or hardware.

 

[Normann]

Sounds like you had disk caching turned on. The memory fault caused apparent corruption of the RAID. Some on-board RAID controllers use system RAM for disk caching rather than special memory for that purpose.

It may not have been corrupted but the RAID suspected corruption. How it overcomes such corruption is dependent on the RAID software and/or hardware.

I was able to boot one more time after the crash. So that makes me think it did not get corrupted during the crash but later on while I was troubleshooting. At one point the BIOS just decided to turn the Nvraid function of the board OFF. I had to manually turn it ON again and set up the array again. After that point it went nuts. I am not sure how that happened. Can BIOS just turn Off a setting? Because it did.

BTW all this on a old ASUS A8N-E board.

 

[nonchalant]

Can BIOS just turn Off a setting? Because it did.

The BIOS shouldnt lose its settings which is why I suspect the board. If its been good since a reinstall then good but I wouldnt be surprised if it does something similar again. Have you considered swapping out the battery? being an old board maybe its running low? Did it lose any other BIOS settings at the time did you notice?

 

[Normann]

The BIOS shouldnt lose its settings which is why I suspect the board. If its been good since a reinstall then good but I wouldnt be surprised if it does something similar again. Have you considered swapping out the battery? being an old board maybe its running low? Did it lose any other BIOS settings at the time did you notice?

I agree that the board can have all kinds of problems by now. It has been through 2 CPU upgrades, somce OC, and 3 video cards and other upgrades. It is over 5 years old. It has responded well to torture but I just noticed the chip fan has stopped working too. The battery did not even occure to me. I will swap that. I should just get rid of it but it is still perfect for basic home office stuff. At least until now it was.