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win7 hangs when adding new HDD raid array
First of all, thanks for the read, like the forum, tons of info here. Second, I tried to search and find my problem here, and just didn't see a thread that fits what I see... lots of problems, but so far nothing matches me. Finally, seems to be some very savvy PC guys here, so hopefully you can help.
background: Last year sometime, my install and all that went flawless, I put win7 64 bit pro on a fresh drive, let it format and install as it wanted, zero problems. Boot drive was alone in the PC, its a WD black 320, I dont have the model or part number in front of me, but it seems to be a solid drive. The PC is a built clone, using Asus mobo and AMD dual core, spec's are in my profile if anyone needs to look that up, basically I don't see any of that mattering in my problem but there you go.
problem: added a promise RAID card last night, using an existing array from a previous build, and the system worked great and booted great once. I thought I was home free, but rebooted just to check since I have so little faith in PC's until they work twice, and sure enough I get hung at the glowing windows screen if this card is installed
I have read all I can here on this, and have been thru much troubleshooting... BIOS is fine, boot drive reads fine... the card and its fast track utility see the array fine... all those drives recognize just fine... the problem as I think today is, with the new array in place, windows can't figure out where to boot.
The old array was bootable years ago, so there is probably an MBR on it? I'm guessing a little at this point, but I used to boot to that array but went away from that years ago... since then, and I think I was on win2k back then, but adding an fresh hdd then, and since moving to XP, nothing ever cared... forward to today, win7 does not like this array being in the mix, thus it hangs at the glowing window screen (the starting windows splash where the happy color balls form the win logo)
remember, this was all up and running once, so that should eliminate a bunch of trial and error on bad drives, bios issues, and driver stuff... i have been thru the ringer with promise, and they swear the driver is good and is WQHL certified and all that... pulling the RAID card out lets me boot normally, so the hang up is definitely with the presence of this array
the catch?? while my boot was C: to begin with, before i ever put the raid in, I put in another solo hdd... i backed up all my pictures to it.. and just before doing all this, noticed that while my C drive and E drive were all legit letter wise, looking in the disk manager, the E drive was listed as disk 0, and the C drive was disk 1... this wasn't a problem at that point, but makes me wonder why on earth the boot drive isn't device 0
ok, sorry for the mega post, hope all the info helps... if you would rather ask one item at a time, just post and i will gladly repeat anything line by line for simplicity
thank you in advance!!!!