Can anyone help me out with this:

I have an ASUS SK8V motherboard, a RAID hard drive, and when I try to install windows on that drive the formatting gets to 100%, my computer restarts and gives the error message:

Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuratoin problem. Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware. Please check the Windows documentation about hardware disk configuration and your hardware reference manuals for additional information.


The computer originally was set up for a SATA drive. I needed more memory so I bought a second hard drive and connected it to my computer to act as a storage device. Here's the clincher: I can't remember what I did to make it work, so I don't really know how to put it back. Currently, I've got it so that the second hard drive (the RAID one) is the only one connected, it's connected to the ribbon and to the 4-pronged plug that has red, yellow, etc. cables coming out of it.

Halp?

Willing to give you as much information as you request, I am soooo clueless when it comes to hardware.

Bet you didn't know there's no such thing as "a RAID hard drive". You likely have an IDE harddrive if it's not SATA (the difference being SATA cables are much, much smaller), in which case you should probably make sure that you have it plugged in and powered correctly. That's almost definitely not the problem, but it doesn't hurt to make sure.

Anyway, when you restart your computer, enter setup and make sure your floppy drive is the last on the "boot from" list that most motherboards have somewhere in those options. That could be the problem, it's happened to me before. If it's not that, you probably either need to configure how your motherboard sees harddrives (mine, for instance, can only have a certain number of IDE drives with a SATA drive, regardless of the number of connectors) or you jumbled up your master/slave settings and would need to read what the settings should be on each harddrive (usually a sticker on the harddrive or the info is on their website) and change them accordingly.

More detailed instructions I probably couldn't give you without being there, unfortunately. I'd try a tech support forum (ASUS forums?) as well.

Never used RAID, but perhaps just disabling it in BIOS will help. Should recognize your hdd alone then, I think.

There are drives supposedly suited for RAID, though for me it's all pretty much marketing bs.

I would imagine he got one of those, and doesn't even need it to be "suited for RAID" considering his other is SATA.

And when I said "enter setup", I really meant "play with the BIOS", heh.

Oh! Right! I think I need to put the master/slave setting pin thing back.

And no, I had NO idea there's no such thing as a "RAID hard drive" >_>

I'm a hardware NEWBIE. But I DO remember changing the pin to make it a slave, I think.

Btw, I also have a hardware problem.

I spilled half a mug of coffee on my printer while it was printing. Any ideas?

Seriously, it worked afterwards. I printed a dozen of pages, the toner head (or whatever it's called) cleared and brown stripes stopped coming out. I printed like 50 pages after that with no problem, even the stench of burnt coffee went away.
But now after some time I try to print and it doesn't seem to detect and swallow the paper.

soooooo here goes, I am slightly tipsy cos it was "remember the dead colleague who died from a genetic heart defect poker night, tonight" with teh guys from work, but.... if you have a HD not being picked up by XP setup then chances are you dont have te drivers for that RAID adapter in the xp setup disk. in which case you will need the floppy disk pabeled SATA raid drivers, or to download said disk from the Asus support site. once you have such floppy disk then when the XP installation cd boots you will get the option to press F6. this is directly after the "press a key im to boot from this CD" stage. if you press f6 then it will give you the option to load the sata controller drivers, and then XP setup should be able to see the hard disks you have connected to it. once it sees the HD then the setup is as normal.

Kromsh was right on the money, but thank you everyone. I had to make the hard drive stop being a slave and start being a master. Sounds a lot like my current relationship.

I am going to look at the SATA drive and see if I can figure out how to turn it into a slave, but if anyone knows offhand...

:X