Help Needed....BSOD during Windows 7 Installation

Hi Everyone,

It's a sad day - my PC was turned off at the wall switch sometime during the boot-up/load. I couldn't get it too reboot after this, and system restore just resulted in a BSOD (I dont have the details for that BSOD unfortunately).

I decided to re-install from scratch using 2 x brand new Samsung F3 SATAII drives I purchased. I decided to setup a RAID0. This is what I did:

1. Install drives into MOBO (see system specs)
2. Enter BIOS and configured RAID0, saved and exit
3. Boot from Windows 7 x64 Ultimate disk
4. New drives found
5. Installed RAID driver for x64
6. Proceed to installation

During the expanding of the installation files, after a few percent progress, I get the BSOD shown. The error main message is:

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

I'm lost as to what the issue might be. Could it be a RAM or MOBO problem? Surely, I wouldn't even be able to start the installation if it was? Perhaps I should default my BIOS settings to factory settings and try again?

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. I'm lost as to where to start.

Thanks,
Golden

Thanks youanvista, but these are brand new drives...straight out of the packet. Surely they don't require any cleaning? I don't see how the cleaning will fix the problem, or am I missing something?

Thanks,
Golden

Hello Golden.



As you say, the easiest place to start would be to reset the CMOS and start over; then RAM would be the next place to start.



Could it be that the HDDs have lost the connection to the mobo?

Thanks BarefootKid. Nope the drives are definately connected to the MOBO since the are available for partioning. If I replicate the problem, which I can, I can still see them - both at the POST whiches shows them correctly as RAID0, and then later on when selecting the partition to install too.

I have been doing some research, and wonder whether I have a bum RAID driver/controller - the one on the Gigabyte disk is quite probably a Vista one (the disk says support for Windows7), and I wonder if Windows 7 is having issues with it.

I'm trying to find a controller for Intel(R) ICH8R/ICH9R/ICH10R/DO/PCH SATA RAID Controller but not having much luck - it needs to be one that I can copy to USB, anf then load during Windows installtion.

In the meantime I'm going to attempt a standard SATA install since Windows has the drivers for that, and see how far that gets me...

UPDATE:

OK, I can succesfully install as a single disk (non-RAID) using SATA IDE, so the problem seems to lie with the RAID configuration. Im pretty sure I did it correctly, so the problem must lie with the driver/controller unless anyone else has other suggestions...?

I'm only thankful thats it doesn't appear to be any of my other components (cross fingers)

Is it possible to build a RAID from within Windows? I suppose not and therein lies the problem...I think I need to find genuine Windows 7 x64 Intel drivers/controllers.....

Thanks for your efforts so far. Hopefully I can find a solution to the RAID issue......any help is still very much appreciated

Thanks,
Golden