HP Z420 - Win7-64bit Ent Does not find the 4x Raid 10 disks

Hello guys!

This is my first forum post ever, but I am really in need of help with this one.
My company have inquired 1x Z820 and 3x Z420 and on both the Z420 and the Z820 I have troubles with the same type of problem....no disks showing up during the Windows 7 installation even though supplying the right driver (I tried them all from http://h20565.www2.hp.com/portal/sit...tte.cachetoken )
And ofcourse, no other disks than the USB flashdrive shows up if launching diskpart with the Shift+F10 command.
The Z420 I am focusing on now got a 9217-4i4e Raid controller with original HP 3TB drives x4 setup in Raid 10.

I originally tried by embedding the drivers with DISM.exe and when that didn't work I tried downloading them separately and trying them out during the installation. Yet, the installation matches the driver with the hardware and enables me to click "Next" to install, yet there is no installation targets when that dialogue closes.

BIOS version is the newest (I even tried reflashing it) = J61 03.69

I also reflashed the raid-controller with this one = Drivers & software for HP Z420 Workstation - HP Support Center


I called HP about this an the last thing they sort of said to escape the call was to try UEFI installation, but the problem is, once I made a bootable drive with Rufus (using the FAT32/GPT-alternative and making sure the usb-stick got its bootx64.efi in "USBSTICK":\BOOT\EFI\ the installation stops and does not continue past the flashing Windows-logo....I have waited 30 minutes...and I take it as an error rather than "a wait and see thing".

I used the ISO named SW_DVD5_SA_Win_Ent_7w_SP1_64BIT_English_-2_MLF_X17-58882.ISO , it should been downloaded from official Microsoft sources....
Rufus = rufus-1.4.10.exe
I am always using the USB 2.0 port on the computer when trying....


Side note, I did install Ubuntu via the tools from pendrivelinux.com and that works perfectly and the Raid 10 shows up as it should...


Attached is a couple of screenshot of one of the setups i tried (legacy).
I can lab as much as I want as long as the hardware take no damage...
I am sure I can add more if asked...I'm really desperate and thankful for your time/help!

Why are you installing to a RAID array? Win7 doesn't like RAID. All we see is problems with RAID. It confers no benefits now that there are SSD's and backup imaging. I would not mess with it but instead go AHCI without RAID.

Then if problems persists work through the steps for Overcoming Windows 7 Installation Failures - Windows 7 Help Forums.

To get the full benefit of your BIOS features you might try UEFI install first, and only switch to full Legacy if this is too much trouble to achieve. Even installing to UEFI might require some level of Legacy or CSM. Consult your Manual on the Support Downloads webpage for your model to read it. Check there for a newer BIOS version.

Why I'm installing on a raid array is not really a valid question to ask, if it should work it should work. To base your point on "feelings" as in "Windows 7 doesn't like" is something I'm simply not buying.
This is programming, programming has no feelings...from the consumers point of view, either its a feature or a bug. Now if Microsoft developing team choose to neglect it, that's not up to us.
Do you think Windows Server 2012 would work better?

Why not SSD and why boot drive in array? Well we got our reasons, to add, this is not an ordinary office worker's desktop computer.

I already wrote I re-flashed both the BIOS and the raid controller, thus your point about updating BIOS is invalid.
Yes to get the "full" benefit of the BIOS i might want to try UEFI, now but if you read what I tried, it doesn't work. It freezes. Some tips here? Maybe some way to manually edit some *.EFI file...? I have no experience in this.
Same UEFI-USB that worked on a UEFI-only laptop didn't work on the Z420, same result (couldn't get past windows logo)

I may have seen over a thousand issues with RAID here since Win7 beta which almost all were resolved by getting rid of it. In that same time theres not been one single positive report of RAID. So where am I expressing "feelings?"

If someone is appreciative of our donated time here we will stick with them until it is resolved by whatever means necessary. But Good luck getting help with that approach.